There and Back Again
by Chaos Dragon
Summary: He was gone at seventeen, lost to a choice that wasn't entirely his own. After three years Danny comes back to an Amity that is not his home, to a family and friends who'd thought him dead, and to a task that could very well break him. DxS
1. Prologue

Based off of the drabble _No Other Way_ to be found in _Chaos Theories_. For Lacey52.

There and Back Again

Prologue

"Officially, I hate being a halfa," Danny muttered as he rotated his arm at the shoulder. It ached from where he'd hit a building not two minutes before. There was brick and dust scattered around him as he looked up from where he knelt. He frowned even harder as he realized that there was green blood dotting his white gloves, and scowled as he ran a hand down the back of his shoulder, over his arm, and found a jagged wound still decorated with the red-brown of the brick he'd hit.

_Son of a…_

The thought trailed off as Danny leapt back into the air to avoid yet another attack. It was a new ghost, but only in the reality that Danny hadn't fought this particular one before. An old ghost, because it was Vlad, yet again, who'd sent it to either test Danny or kill him. Danny was beginning to think it was to kill him, since he could feel more blood trickling down his side beneath the fitted hazmat he wore.

There wasn't any warning as he was slammed into the building again, this time through the wall with painful force. When Danny opened his eyes they were blurred, but he could still make out the family of four staring at him from where they sat around their dining room table eating their dinner. There was more blood now, he could feel it slippery on his skin, and Danny rolled to his feet with a pained groan.

He shot them all an apologetic look as he went invisible and then intangible, sinking through the floor with a faint, "Sorry," as he studiously avoided looking at the gaping hole in the wall he'd just gone through.

He only flinched as he slipped through another floor and then through an empty apartment and out an unblemished wall. He looked around warily and stayed invisible, but he couldn't find the ghost anywhere. "Target time," he murmured with a sigh. Danny slipped back into visibility and looked around again, this time with his lip between his teeth.

_I have to finish this quickly, one way or another,_ he realized as he turned again, eyes always searching. The fight had raged for nearly an hour already, if a fight was what it could be called. Danny felt like he'd been playing at personal punching bag for the other ghost, who still refused to show himself. At the rate they were going, Danny knew it would only take one really good hit to take him down and out. He was that low on power.

Danny felt the hairs on the back of his neck stiffen and tensed his shoulders a moment before something him in the back. It was a hard blow, low and dead center, and he gasped as the pain radiated through his back and down his legs. Bile rose in his throat as he fought against gravity and righted himself in the air to face the ghost that had finally attacked him again.

It was thin and pale with skin shaded purple instead of the usual ghostly green and blue. The eyes were red, but not brightly so. No, they were darker red, the shade of blood, the color Danny half expected to see dripping from the wounds it had already inflicted on him. Dull, rusty red instead of the sparkling green ectoplasm infused blood that Danny himself bled. It was more reptilian than human, with patterns that ran across its skin in ways that only reinforced the thought in his mind. They looked almost like scales, but nothing at all like scales since it was only an impression instead of a reality.

And it was fast.

Too fast for Danny, and he knew it. The ghost knew it, too, and let a slippery smile rise on its face as it started for Danny again. He did the only thing he could think of; he ran. It was figure of speech, but the way he flew away did nothing to make him feel any better about the retreat. Not that Danny felt anything other than fear and worry, but he couldn't risk this monster going after anyone besides himself. If he was outmatched as Danny Phantom then no one else stood a chance.

He needed something to give him an edge, but nothing was coming to mind. Danny flung his thoughts out, groping at anything that might turn into a weapon, an advantage, a way to survive. There was nothing at hand, nothing that he could think of, and a glance back only made Danny push harder as he saw the ghost sliding closer in the air.

And it still it came, despite the speed that Danny poured on.

He ran a gloved hand across his face to wipe the sweat from his forehead and calm the stinging in his eyes from the wind, but only succeeded in smearing his own blood across his skin in a slick smudge of red and green. "I need a plan," he muttered into the wind as it ripped the pleading words away.

It wasn't fair that the best strategist they had was Sam. More unfair that she was waiting for him to return to the park. Even more unfair that Tucker was a better strategist than he was. He knew his tactics, he could use them—he had a brain. But he wasn't as good as his friends. They were always trying to save the day and keep him from being hurt. Danny had long since accepted that he was going to get hurt saving the day. It made his own strategies more to the point, more brutal, more… ruthless, he supposed.

It was that thought that made Danny whip around in the sky and shoot straight back at the ghost chasing him. The complete recklessness of the act gave him the advantage of surprise, and Danny took it with both hands as he swerved and dove into the outskirts of Amity Park. This was the only real advantage that he had, and he knew it: Amity Park was his, he knew it inside and out, above and below, from where the township began to where it ended, and some ways beyond.

And he raced away with that knowledge.

Raced away to the center of the town, to the park, where his Sam was waiting and, he hoped, was alert and ready with a Fenton thermos. It was his only hope, his only chance, and Danny's eyes burned and teared as he gritted his teeth and forced out an ounce more of speed, not daring to look back and see if the chase was on. He could only trust that it was, that the other ghost was following, that he had the chance to win.

The park was in sight when Danny's strength and speed began to falter, and then he was above it and bringing himself to an unsteady halt to hover and search for the ghost that was nowhere to be seen. He shook his head when he couldn't find it and dropped lower in the sky as he wondered if he'd managed to lose it after all. As appealing as the thought was Danny could only frown, his brow furrowing as he considered the possibility. If he had lost it, he'd have to go find it. A ghost that powerful, that cunning and vicious loose in Amity Park was something he didn't want to contemplate.

"Danny?" Sam's voice came from behind and beneath him, and Danny turned in the air to shoot a faint smile at Sam.

He shrugged. "I'll have to go find him. You'll be ready if I come back?"

Wide violet eyes met his and then dropped to see the green blood that soaked most of his right arm. Then they moved to the rest of his body taking in the ripped hazmat, more blood, and noticing the things that Danny had yet to realize. That his blood was still flowing freely in some places, that his right side had pieces of rust colored brick still sticking out of it. That red blood was beginning to mingle with his green ghost blood as he pushed himself harder and farther than ever before.

She bit her lip and Danny wondered if she was going to say no, demand to go with him. Then she smiled at him. It was strained, upset looking, but it was a smile. "I'll be ready. Tucker's gone for another thermos. He said he'd try and snag one of your mom's ectoguns."

Danny chuckled. "Just as long as it's not one of Dad's. His never work."

Sam laughed, and again it was anxious. It was the last thing that Danny heard as he was hit from above and driven down into the ground. He cursed himself even as he struggled against the grip the ghost had on him, but its long fingers dug into the flesh of his arms to make the already wounded one bleed worse that it already was. The other would be horribly bruised—if he lived through this. Danny knew that his chances were growing slimmer by the moment as the ghost leered into his face, eyes bone chillingly crimson as it drove its weight into him and tried pushing him further down into the ground.

Danny grunted as he tried pushing up against it. All he succeeded in doing was shifting the ghost so that instead of clenching its bone thin hands around his arms, it was crushing into his chest. The only thing he could hear was his own struggling breathing as the pressure on him grew heavier. He pushed again, wrapping his hands around its neck and only grimaced as he felt the first creak of bone. A creak, a moment of give, and then the actual snap as one of his ribs gave in beneath the pressure and fractured in two.

The pain was sudden and sharp, sharper than anything he was already feeling, but Danny couldn't do anything more than whimper as his eyes closed and he tried desperately wrenching the ghost's head around. Something, _anything_ to stop it.

Then another creak, and another snap, and another, and another as the ghost pressed against his chest at the human frailty beneath. It was too much, and Danny screamed.

And when he screamed the earth moved.

---

There was no explanation.

In the three weeks that followed Danny's disappearance Sam had been questioned by his family, her family, the police, Jazz and Tucker. She'd told as much truth to his family and the police as she could, leaving out only the part in which Danny Fenton was Danny Phantom, and that he'd been hurt, possibly fatally wounded before the earthquake that had happened when Danny was attacked by the strange ghost. She'd lied outright to her own parents and told them that she'd only been in the park at the same time as Danny purely by coincidence.

To Jazz and Tucker she told the truth: that he'd been fighting a ghost and losing from what he looked like. It had taken him by surprised, and the next thing Sam knew was that Danny was screaming, and the scream became one of his dangerous and deadly Ghostly Wails. All that she had found before the police came was a puddle of ectoplasm that was rapidly cooling and evaporating inside the crater. The police had come because Sam had been screaming.

Her family didn't really care about Danny, except for her grandmother. There was no reason to expect them to cling to the thought of Danny alive and well and… just gone. His parents had already, if not come to terms with the idea, placed their faith in the thought that they were completely justified in the fact that ghosts were evil and dangerous.

And that a ghost had killed their only son to strike back at the Fenton's and their ghost hunting way of life. While the thought could have been true for Maddie, it was only laughable when applied to Jack Fenton.

Jazz was taking refuge in school. She'd taken a look at the facts as presented by Sam and spent three days locked inside her room, crying because she believed Danny was dead.

Tucker was the only one who had stayed by Sam's side, steadfast in his faith in Danny. They'd seen Danny pull off so many miracles, what was one more? And they waited. But three weeks passed, and there was no miracle. Instead there was only Tucker, and there was Sam. There was no Danny.

Tucker had struggled with it for more than a week. Almost two. Eleven days if he wanted to count them, not that he had. But there was no denying it, no getting around the fact that if Danny was still alive he'd at least have tried to contact them, sent a message. That if Danny was alive, he'd already be back. It was this sure knowledge that led Tucker to the heartbreaking realization that Danny couldn't be alive.

It was the surety in that realization that made Tucker take on the task of convincing Sam to let go. A task that he'd already known was going to be difficult because the three had been the best of friends since preschool. A task only made more difficult because Sam was in love with Danny. Three years had only made it that much stronger for her.

He chose to do it at her house, in the safety and sanctity of her own room. He hoped the familiar surroundings would at least soothe her as he hammered against her irrational hope. But it broke his heart to do it, worse to see her like this and know that he was the one who had broken her down and driven her to tears.

"If he were alive he'd have at least gotten a message to us by now, Sam. You know that," he said gently, knowing that no matter how softly he said it, how carefully he phrased it, it would only sound like an attack to her.

"He's not dead. I'd know if he was." Her voice was steady even through the tears, adamant that the connection she'd shared with Danny since childhood would never lie to her.

Tucker sighed and sat down on the bed next to her, bracing himself with his feet as the mattress slumped beneath his weight. "Sam, he's not coming back. You have to face it." He bit his lip and closed his eyes for a moment so he wouldn't have to see her shoulders shake with her silent tears. "You're just making harder on yourself, Sam. You're the only one who thinks he might still be alive."

"He'll be back! There was no body! There's no proof, and _I would know!_" Her voice broke as she nearly shrieked the last few words, her sobs uncontrollable and violent on her slim frame. She was hysterical, he realized, and he looped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to try and calm her some.

He pressed a kiss to her temple and rubbed her arms gently, soothingly. "You're right, Sam," he finally whispered as she calmed some, hating himself as he did but knowing that there really was no other way to deal with her right now. The pain of losing Danny was threatening to break her, and Tucker couldn't bear it if that happened.

He'd already lost one of his best friends; he couldn't lose the other.

"You're right, Sam," he whispered again, his eyes burning behind his glasses. Tears began to slide down his cheeks. "You would know."

---

His body ached in more places than he could count, but nothing hurt quite so badly as his heart as he watched the image as it flowed across the time portal inside Clockwork's lair. The sounds of Sam's hysterical sobbing echoed through it without relief, drowning out the sounds of everything inside the mechanical castle. Everything except maybe Danny's conscience, and the sounds that he was sure were his heart breaking.

He stood there, a boy, very nearly a man, pale and weary with more than just his injuries. His blue eyes were sad as he watched the portal, watched his two best friends trying to find solace in the wake of his disappearance. It tore at him, but there was nothing he could do about it. True, he could try and go back home. But he'd left for a reason, and it wasn't something he could turn his back on.

_Think of the greater good,_ he told himself silently as he shifted where he stood, still watching.

He shifted again trying to ignore the urge to scratch. The arm bound to his chest was healing rapidly now that he was regaining his strength, much more rapidly than he'd have expected if he were to judge by the rate he'd been healing for weeks. But with the return of his voice and the healing of whatever damage his Wail had done to his throat, he'd improved in leaps and bounds.

The fact that he was still recovering spoke of how seriously he'd been injured.

But the arm itched terribly beneath the thick white bandage it was bound with. The ribs didn't exactly itch where they were healing, but the gashes that had been on his back and the places bone had pierced his skin drove him to madness. The only thing that kept him from itching was iron will. And the thick bandages that completely destroyed any attempts he might have already made.

At least the itching took up some part of his thoughts so that watching Sam cry didn't drive him insane. But the broken way she was speaking to Tucker… No amount of itching could keep him from breaking, one little piece at a time.

"I can't lose him, Tuck," she was whispering. It was so clear, like she was standing right next to him, close enough to touch. He could nearly feel the warmth of her breath on his ear. "I have to believe. I just have to."

It drove tears to his eyes, and he reached out to the image of her where it rippled inside the portal. "Oh, Sam," he murmured as his fingers slipped across the surface of the image, distorting it where he touched and breaking the picture. Even without it he could still hear her desperate sobs and words.

Danny closed his eyes and swallowed. "Tell me again, Clockwork. Tell me that there's no other way. Tell me why I have to do this, why I have to hurt them like this."

_Why I have to hurt her like this._

He was silent as he listened, again.


	2. Chapter 1

There and Back Again

1

It never failed to surprise him how little things could change. In the years since he'd left he'd somehow expected Amity to become the technological metropolis that it had been in a different life. It wasn't—it had barely changed. In fact, the only things that he saw that were changed were the high school and the hospital. Not the new one, the one that people actually went to. Someone had made the decision to raze the abandoned hospital at the edge of town to the ground. The high school, surprisingly, had been… not remodeled, but updated and expanded on.

Not much change, but enough that Danny knew his home was still home and that it was still… alive.

He was tired as he floated across the sky, almost randomly drifting as he looked down in wonder and longing. It had been so long, so very long since he'd been here. Danny closed his eyes and scrubbed his hand across his face before looking down again. The ache was there, right in the back of his chest. Seeing his house, the Op-Center's array above it, the familiar sweep of every piece of equipment rising from the decking. It hurt in a way he hadn't expected when he'd started the trip home.

There was the Nasty Burger, the place he'd spent so many lazy afternoons with Sam and Tucker. And there was the mall. There was this, and there was that, and so many places he remembered, places he hadn't been in years. And there, he saw with a stony gaze, was the park, the last place Danny had been in his Amity Park. The park, the last place he saw Sam. The park, the place where his family and friends believed that he'd died.

Danny clenched his jaw as he stared down, hands curling into fists, one at his side, the other around the strap of the bag he carried. Then he forced himself to relax, carefully slinging the strap over his head so that it rested across his chest, the bag settled against his hip and side. No sense in possibly dropping it as he found his way down to Amity. That bag held his whole life, or at least what was left of it.

The faint neon glare of the small motel on the east side of town drew him, and Danny begin a casual descent that would have him there before too long. It would be a relief to get a room for the night, he was more tired than he'd been in a long time. He hadn't slept well in days, slept at all, really, and he knew that he needed desperately to get some rest. He'd either get it on his own or his body would force him to, and that would inevitably happen when he needed it least. In the middle of a ghost attack probably, or maybe while he was filling out applications and resumes. That would be perfect, to lose out on a job he was overqualified for because he passed out from sheer exhaustion. But it wouldn't be unusual considering the things that tended to happen in his life.

In Danny's best experience, unusual was the norm for him.

His thoughts were shattered into pieces as he gasped out a chilled breath, and he rolled his eyes. "Guess it really isn't a homecoming without some action," he muttered as he double-checked the bag and strap again before he narrowed his eyes and looked into the darkness searchingly. The ghost was to the north, Danny could feel the power echoing at him from there. Not much, but enough that he could rule out minor ghosts like Cujo and the Box Ghost.

When he found it, it didn't even have a truly corporeal form. He'd have said once that it was an ectopuss, but Danny had learned a few things since he'd left. Most notably that not everything that looked like and ectopuss _was_ an ectopuss. No, this wasn't an ectopuss. It was the beginning of something else, a new ghost that didn't come from the death of a human… Or an inhuman for that matter. Danny really didn't have an explanation for some of the ghosts that he encountered. Sometimes he thought that they were created from the spillover over a million human psyches blending into one.

He'd been floating behind it for several minutes, following along as it sped over Amity Park, before it realized that he was even there, and by the time it turned around all it saw was a large white-gloved fist in its face. There was a shriek, a squeal, and Danny gave chase as it fled higher into the sky. It was almost sad; every time the ghost tried to duck, dodge, slip away around or through something, Danny was already there waiting for it.

It only took a few minutes of the harsh punishment before it stopped, ectoplasm drooping as it stared up at him where he floated above it, eyes shining green and slanted in anger. A smirk slipped across his face as he pulled an old and battered Fenton thermos from behind his back and thumbed the lid off, catching it absently in his free hand.

"You can tell them all that I'm back," he said quietly as he laid his thumb on the button and pointed it at the apparition. "Tell them I'm back, and that Amity is _my_ town."

He arched an eyebrow and waved the thermos at the ghost, not even watching as it took the chance and darted off. Danny didn't chase it down this time, he only capped the thermos and hooked it back onto his belt at the small of his back. It wasn't really a very strong ghost, and he'd frightened it well enough that it would run straight for the Ghost Zone, which was what he wanted. It would be too… difficult to sneak back into his house and deposit the erring spirit into the Ghost Zone via the Fenton Portal. Easier to frighten it past death and let it spread the word that he was back and ready to fight for his town.

He was blocks from the motel now, but it was just as well, he decided as he dropped down to the ground and let go of his ghost half. He rolled his shoulders and then his neck, groaning in appreciation as several of the vertebra popped loudly to relieve some of the tension that his return had built into his neck and shoulders. There was so much to be done, so much to… Not to forget. But to put aside.

He didn't want; that was easily admitted. It was hard to put away such a significant part of his life. But it had to be done.

Resignation tinged his eyes into a darker blue as he stared down at the clean gold band on his left hand. He could help but chew on his lip as he tugged at it, wincing as it finally cleared his knuckle and came off to lay in his hand as nothing more than an empty circle. Such a fitting symbol of his life since he left: empty and leaving him right back where he'd started. If he was close to tears as he opened the bag he carried and dropped it inside a zippered pouch within, to be expected.

Few things are as heartbreaking as hearing one ring join two others.

"Better not to think about it," he murmured to himself as he closed the pouch, the bag, and started walking, the thumb of his left hand absently rubbing the now bare third finger. It was hard not to think about it, not when the skin was pale and too smooth against the sunned and rough skin everywhere else on his hand.

He turned and started down the street with a sigh. Pools of light broke the shadows as he passed, but Danny didn't pay attention to it as he made his way towards the motel. It was going to be a long walk, but he couldn't find the willpower to fly. Instead, he found himself savoring the feeling of walking through the town, the familiar streets and buildings, the warm sense of _home_ that it seemed to exude.

He stopped as he passed the high school, feet stilling of their own accord as his eyes found the dark and empty windows, the closed doors. The last time he'd stood on those steps he'd been seventeen, he'd been with his best friends. He'd been… free. The brick and mortar of the brownstone was cold to the touch as he reached out to lay a hand on it, savoring the familiarity of the building. For a moment he could almost pretend he was seventeen again, just a kid, with no idea of the things that he would have to do.

Almost.

Now he was bound by chains that he couldn't break, even if he tried. If he managed to break them everything he'd done since he left Amity would be for nothing and he'd be… a failure. More of a failure than he already was. He didn't think of himself as a hero, not anymore, not after what had happened—what he'd had to let happen. But he wasn't a hero. He was just trying to survive now, and make sure that everyone he loved survived, too.

He sighed and closed his eyes as he realized that he'd been worrying his thumb against his finger again, and forced himself to stop as he pulled away from the wall and started walking again. He shifted the bag, pulling it closer and whispering into the night, "Maybe I can rest a little."

Another ten minutes of walking and surely he'd be there, five more minutes and he'd have a room. Then all he needed was enough time to get inside it, drop the bag and pass out on the bed to make up for the three days he'd gone without sleep. He could get some sleep and then he could think about what he had to do, all of the things that he needed to live here again.

Danny shook his head as he listened to his own echoing footsteps. There were just so many things to _be_ done. It was overwhelming, but maybe after some sleep, some food, and little more time between him and her death, maybe then he could think a little more clearly. Maybe then it wouldn't hurt so much, the thought of just living. Maybe then he could take care of everything once and for all so that he never had to go through that again.

He needed a job, but before he could get one he needed to plant his transcripts so that no one would think he'd faked his degree. He needed a place to live, but he'd emptied their bank accounts before he left. That was what the bulk of his bag was: their life savings. He'd have papers on a place before darkness fell again, that wasn't a real worry. The real worry came from when _they_ found out. Once his family knew he was back they'd want to know why he couldn't just come home and pick back up where he left off.

To them he was still a kid, still their goofy teenaged son. Even when they looked at him all they would see was the same thing. Maybe a little older, but they'd shrug it all off in an attempt to stitch the family back together. Danny knew they'd never see him as he really was, it'd take years to convince them that he was grown, on his own. How could he even begin to tell them that he was well accustomed to living on his own, to juggling bills and checking and savings and money market accounts? That he'd already had a home in his own name nearly paid off, had left two cars and a little sailboat?

That he'd left a wife. That he was a—

He didn't say it. Didn't even think it. Even that hurt too much. And he couldn't deal with that pain right now. He didn't want to deal with it, ever. He just wanted to sleep.

The sudden chill that spread through him and then up and out of his mouth was a good enough distraction. It was late enough that Danny didn't really worry that anyone would see him, but he checked anyway letting his own ghostly energy seep out of him and creep across the ground and into the surrounding buildings. It was even better than he'd thought; he was still close enough to Amity's business district that there were few homes around, and what homes there were had only soundly sleeping people.

He didn't say a word as he changed, only tugging the power back and shivering as it crawled back into and through him, taking his human half with it. The hazmat would have let him blend into the shadows but for the gleaming white of his gloves, boots and belt. Even without those the hair would have been a beacon, and there was no way to miss the glowing green of his eyes as he peered around, searching for the ghost he knew was coming. There was nothing in sight so Danny lifted himself off of the ground to hover expectantly above it.

It was a lesson he'd learned years ago; when the attack comes from neither the front, not the back, the left, nor the right, then it can only come from above or below. And since there was nothing above him…

He almost laughed at the glistening blue net that surged from beneath the grass to capture nothing. Silver sheened metal follow and flaming green hair, and Danny did laugh then.

"I see the news spread quickly," he tossed at Skulker conversationally.

Skulker smirked and aimed one of his rockets, seemingly forgetting that Danny had been prepared for him and the planned ambush had failed. "Too bad your return is so short-lived," Skulker thundered at him as he fired. "Your pelt will lie at the foot of my bed, Ghost Child."

Danny frowned and narrowed his eyes as he held a hand out. A flickering dome of ectoenergy came to life in front of him and held solid at the missile that burst on it. "I'm not a child," he said lowly, voice gone as deep and gravelly as it had been in another life, and Danny pursed his lips as he regarded his enemy.

"You should probably run now," he added as he powered up an ectoblast absently, bouncing it in his hand as he arched a dark brow at Skulker.

For a moment it seemed like Skulker would stay and fight. Then the battle suit's head craned to look at the empty and despondent net on the ground beneath his feet. Another almost silent mechanical whirring as it faced Danny again and took in the reality, and Skulker made his decision. Too late, he realized at the growing green light. Skulker only had a moment to try and raise a shield, but it was no use. The ectoblast hit him and threw him back into the street. The similarities didn't escape the tiny green ghost as he ordered himself back up and into the fight.

Too many times he'd done something very much like it to Danny Phantom himself. Now that the tables were turned he found it was less than amusing. Even less so as the next ectoblast took of a few pieces of his suit. A chunk flew from one of the arm units and took most of the shoulder with it making wires spark and crackle as air hissed out of a torn tube. If the silicon fluid used to lubricate the joints had been red instead of clear, Danny would almost have believed the suit to be real, to believe that it was bleeding.

Instead it was just a hunk of metal, wire, clear seeping liquid.

There was a squeal from within the suit as Skulker yanked on the eject, but nothing happen. Now he panicked. He was a sitting duck, and he knew it. Skulker yanked on the eject again, and then again, and then a third time that broke the arm off of the control. It was his only way out of the suit without powering it down and phasing out, and that would leave him in no safer position than he was already in.

"Come on, Skulker," Danny chuckled, and the tiny ghost maneuvered the battle suit's head to face the halfa. It was a frightening sight; he was so calm. In retrospect, Skulker realized that he'd never stood a chance against the Phantom. Not once during the fight, if that's what you could call it, not even for a moment.

"I've known about your little eject seat for years now," Danny said as he held a hand out towards the exoskeleton. Green energy flared around Danny's hand and flew in a blinding streak to the battle suit.

To Skulker's shock and dismay the suit powered down immediately. Then the ejection controls popped, much to his horror, clicked over and activated and sent the small green ghost shooting out of the front of the battle suit and straight into Danny Phantom's iron grip. Skulker shrieked as he found himself at the mercy of his prey leaving Danny to laugh again, loudly this time. It was almost worth an immediate battle to see the usually self assured ghost whimpering and writhing as he tried to escape. Almost.

Part him chuckled, the larger part was only disturbed by it. It'd been a long time since Skulker had attacked him, with or without provocation. Not that Danny had provoked the ghost tonight, though it could be argued that his mere existence was provocation enough. Danny was quiet as Skulker's struggles echoed in the emptiness around them. They only grew stronger and more frantic as Danny tugged his Fenton thermos from where it was clipped to his belt and thumbed the lid off. There was a faint whir and whine as it powered up, then a rushing slurp as it tugged the battle skeleton into its confines.

Skulker's shrieks were overpowered by it when he too was pulled inside, and Danny was alone again on the street with a now deactivated thermos in his numb grasp. He wanted to feel smug, it was nice to know that he'd gotten the best of Skulker without really trying. But the smugness wasn't coming the way he thought it might. Granted, he did smirk a little as he returned the lid to where it belonged instead of letting it dangle from the chain he'd attached to it alongside the thermos. But it wasn't the all out superiority he'd thought he'd have upon returning.

But those thoughts were years old, all of them. Before his first year in exile had passed they'd all but disappeared as his desire for the people and places he'd left behind started to drown out his envisioned return. And now he was back. Now he was home.

Danny clipped the thermos back to his waist and shifted back to human. It felt good to just be in his own skin again, in his own town. There was still so much to be done, and now he was almost to the other side of town, completely opposite of the little motel where he was planning on staying. Danny sighed in annoyance and resignation, and then stiffened as the sigh came nowhere close to hiding the gasp that came from somewhere behind him.

But when Danny turned he didn't even have the presence of mind to curse himself a dozen times over. He could hear it, somewhere very deep in the back of his mind, a little running commentary that was damning him, calling him ten different kinds of fool, blaming his utter stupidity for changing back without checking, for doing _anything_ without being completely aware of his surroundings. Hating him for it happening this way when it should have been completely and utterly under his terms.

But in the front, much louder and much clearer was the part of himself that couldn't help but notice how much taller she was, how she'd turned from a lovely girl to a heartbreakingly beautiful woman. Her hair was longer, and she wasn't tooling around decked out in nothing but black. The Docs were gone, and her fair skin had a hint of color to it. But there was no mistaking those amethyst eyes, or the way her lips shaped into his name, even if he couldn't hear it.

For a moment Danny couldn't breathe. For another moment he thought he might die. Then the pain set in and he had to brace himself from reeling back, though there was no hiding the way he clutched at his chest. The shock of seeing her, the hurt of it was palpable, and it wrenched painfully through him so that he could only wonder if this was what it felt like to have his heart ripped out.

In the end, there was only one thing he could say. Her name.

"Sam."

---

**Tossing these up today, chapter 3 will follow on Thursday, but these will be edited and reposted when chapter 3 goes up. So you may want to check and reread them when 3's posted. Also, for those who don't know, the sabbatical is over.**


	3. Chapter 2

There and Back Again

2

Her days were always the same. The same job, the same responsibilities, the same worry and forgotten hope. It wasn't that she hated it, any of it—most people would kill to have a job that they didn't hate, and Sam didn't hate her job in the least. But sometimes she did wish that she didn't have to get up and go to work every day. Some days she just wanted to lie in bed with the sheet over her head and pretend that the last three years had never happened. Sometimes it felt like her life had spiraled out of control on the day that Danny disappeared.

Not died—never died. She was the only one left who refused to say that.

She'd stayed late again, but that was nothing new. Even if it didn't pay a six figure salary, Sam took her job very seriously. She'd been the editor for _Script_ since she'd graduated high school. It was small, only local, but Sam liked to think that the pieces she ran in the magazine were quality pieces of fiction, if only to assuage her realization that it would never be anything other than Amity Park's own literary magazine. There was no need of a degree, but she still took classes at the community college. She was adamant that she wasn't going to survive based on her family's fortune.

In truth, she could have.

She'd been in control of the business and investments since her parents had been killed. That had been two months after Danny left, another blow that had left her reeling in its aftermath. She hadn't been close to her parents, not like she was with her grandmother, but losing them for nothing more than someone's need to thrill themselves at a hundred miles an hour… It was painful, even years later.

A stupid accident during a stupid vacation. They took those kinds a lot; she couldn't recall ever having seen her parents do anything other than spend the family fortune. It was only because Grams had kept a tight hold of the money that they still had a fortune. Sam was supposed to go; the trip itself had been proposed to help Sam get past Danny's disappearance. She'd refused flat out and her parents had gone anyway.

They were killed in Germany, by a young American private who'd just blown his pay on a new BMW. Apparently it was a trend for soldiers stationed there; the cars were cheaper if you bought them in Europe. He'd taken it on the autobahn, had been determined to try out all of its gears. He'd only made it to third before he lost control and the brand new BMW swept into the rented Town Car her parents had been in. they'd died instantly; it was her only comfort.

Less than a year later her world was upended again when she lost her grandmother, not to death but to disease. She'd been diagnosed with Alzheimer's after she'd tried grounding Sam for dying her hair. It was the first time she'd been mistaken as her mother, but not the last. Sam had long since given up trying to explain to her Grams that her mom was dead. She'd done it once and it had broken her heart to see her grandmother have to live through the loss again.

Tonight had been another of those nights, where Sam didn't exist and only Pamela did. Those were the nights that the visits were hardest, but Sam never missed a night unless she was sick. There was no other reason for her not to visit. She didn't count the fact that some night she just wanted to go home and forget everything a valid reason, so she always went.

Usually she went home after each visit, ate, flipped on the television to CNN and read a book with one ear out for breaking news. Tonight she couldn't, it was her night for duty and she was on her way to Tucker's to pick up the portal alert. Valerie would get it from her tomorrow. It was their schedule, one night each on a rotating basis with Jazz and the Fenton's to pinch hit when it was an emergency. There hadn't been one yet, so there'd been no need to call Jazz back from school or to explain to the Fenton's about Danny and Phantom. It was a conversation that was still avoided at all costs even if it was the only clue to Danny's disappearance.

Tucker had landed on his feet, no matter that he'd had Sam using him as a solid shoulder most of the time. He'd gotten accepted into MIT and CalTech on full scholarships in microtechnology, but he'd said no to both when the CEO of Axion had offered job a learning fellowship while he attended UI-Amity Park. Without even Sam's urging Tucker had earned his Bachelor's in computer sciences in two years, and his fellowship had rewarded him with an honorary Master's from CalTech on his nanotechnology. He was doing well for himself, and that was one ray of sunshine in Sam's life.

Even if going to his house was like walking into a sci-fi convention.

Valerie was already there when Sam arrived, she had to park behind Valerie's jeep. But the other girl had a jet sled so Sam didn't feel exactly guilty about it as she did. Besides, Val was at Tucker's often enough that Sam wondered if she ever went home. They weren't involved, something that Sam was forever grateful for, but they spent so much of their free time building and rebuilding ghost hunting gadgets that she was sure it wasn't healthy.

She didn't knock as she slid her key into the lock and let herself in with a loud, "Just getting the portal alert. Be in and out in two." She thought she heard Tucker's soldering iron as she searched his dining room table for the alert and came up empty handed.

Two seconds after she gave up there and moved to the coffee table a head poked up through the basement door. "Tucker says it's next to the coffee pot."

Sam rolled her eyes and shook her head as she headed back into the kitchen. "Which one is the coffee pot?" she asked with an exasperated glance around the kitchen. "He's got so many toys in here I can't tell anymore. Oh, and you have grease on your face."

Val followed Sam in as she wiped at her cheek with one grease stained hand, only making matters worse. "Yeah, we're working on the Specter Speeder. Tucker's trying to integrate the nanobots into the search function to make it work more efficiently." She shrugged. "Honestly, I think it works fine already."

"Oh, there it is," Sam said as she grabbed a small remote from next to what definitely wasn't Tucker's coffee pot. "When you go back down, smack him for me. That's not a coffee pot. It might once have been, but it's not anymore, and he knows it."

"Will do," Val said with a faint smirk as she headed back for the basement door. "Call if you need backup," she reminded Sam before disappearing below, and Sam let herself back out with a sigh.

---

The drive home was shorter than it would have been if she still lived in the home of her childhood. Sam had sold it only weeks after her Grams went into the nursing home—living there alone was too painful for words. Instead she rented a small apartment across the street from the park. She liked being able to look out of her window and find the peace of the trees. It soothed her when her mind refused to rest and she needed just a minute to relax, and that was something that seemed to happen far too often for Sam.

She had a ritual for the nights she was on duty. A microwave dinner thrown in to be nuked while she grabbed a quick shower; any longer than quick and she was bound to hear the portal alarm go off while she was still naked and dripping. There was still silence as she slipped out of the shower and wrapped herself in a towel to dry quickly before dressing. It was their uniform, Valerie had once called it fondly: a black t-shirt (they used military style sweaters picked up from a surplus store in winter) and flat black cargo pants. She never tied her boots back on unless she really had to go out, and wouldn't even change to sleep. Instead she'd dress for work in the morning and drag her uniform along in a bag.

They'd all been lucky so far, even with Danny gone for so long. The ghosts had taken to doing most of their work at night and all three had only had to explain the unexplainable disappearances form work a handful of time.

She'd only just taken the last bite of her dinner when the alert sounded for the first time of the night. The boots were quickly tied on and Sam only glanced at the portal alert before clipping it to her belt and slipping the strap of her ectogun over her head so that it rested at her back. She carried another in her hand and a thermos strapped to her belt opposite the alert as she darted out of her house, making sure to lock the door behind her.

The alert system was actually a lot more refined than it looked at first glance. Deceptively simple, as Tucker had explained when he'd first designed it and synchronized it with the Fenton Portal. As she moved at a swift jog down the dark streets of Amity Park Sam lifted it from her belt and glanced down at the optical sensor in front before checking the readout Tucker had laid into the top. According to the tracking device inside it was reading the escapee's spectral signature due west, and Sam cut through an alley to get to a street that would take her where she needed to go.

That was one of the trickiest, and most astonishing features Tucker had built into the alert. Even more impressive was that he'd done it all without the Fenton's knowing that he had. It had taken more than one try to get into the lab—in the end they'd had to enlist Jazz as help and get her to convince her parents to have a night out. The night out had been to celebrate Jazz's twenty-first birthday. She'd planned and connived for almost five months, finally demanding that they go to at least be her designated driver since she was going to have the ritualistic birthday drink and, Jazz saying that she was none too sure of her ability to hold alcohol, wanted to know that she had at least two people who would make sure she was safe where she was, and would take her home.

She'd made good on her word, Sam had witnessed it. Jazz Fenton had gotten well and truly drunk while Tucker crept around in the Fenton lab. He'd told Sam about it once; they'd never been more grateful that Danny had been insistent on adding them to the DNA lock. Sure, it meant that anyone who shared the Manson or Foley blood could open the portal, but they'd all acknowledged that the odds of either sets of relatives seeing the inside of the Fenton lab again were less than slim to none. He'd synced the portal with his PDA and hacked his way inside it before adding the single piece of equipment that had to remain inside the lab. They'd taken great pains to make it blend in with the exterior of the portal, but in the end Tucker had pulled three of the steel plates off to bury it inside the internal wiring and hardware.

A singular piece of technology it was, too, designed to capture the ectoplasmic signature of whatever ghost came out through the portal and transmitting the signal through the alert device. If it was someone already known it would trip the processor inside of the alert and show an identifiable reading on the tracking window. If it was something they hadn't come across yet it would only track it until the files were updated in the database Tucker kept on a separate hard drive at home. Once the alert had been synchronized with that it would refresh it's portable database and they'd never wonder again.

The last trick Tucker had pulled was what he jokingly called an anti-ghost alert that would unflag the ghost that had escaped once it had returned to the Ghost Zone, whether under its own steam or helped out by one of them. That was never a problem; they had enough thermoses that they never worried about running out before they could return the spirits, and Jack and Maddie couldn't be in the lab all the time. They usually cleared out of it by midnight and never returned until at least after breakfast unless they were working on something especially important. That didn't happen so often anymore, and Tucker or Sam habitually took breakfast with the Fenton's at least three times a week.

They were family in every way but by blood.

Those were the mornings they returned their captives to the Ghost Zone via the Fenton portal. Tucker still had yet to build a second portal. He'd told Sam and Valerie more than once that there was no way to recreate it without all of the schematics. And he was sure that Maddie Fenton held the missing pieces, most likely in her head as opposed to on paper or microchip. She wasn't as eccentric as Jack was, not by any stretch of the imagination, but she did have a healthy dose of paranoia about letting their creations into hands that weren't Fenton. Or Sam's and Tucker's.

Sam settled into her pace as she crossed the town, passing the Nasty Burger first and then the park before she slowed in front of the high school, her eyes glued to the tracking window. The alert had unflagged itself, a surprise since that didn't happen too often. Most times the ghosts who escaped wanted to stay free. There was only one time they'd ever had the alert lose rang, but that hadn't been a worry; Valerie had chased the ghost out of Amity while Tucker had the alert. She'd brought it back in a thermos.

But the ghost that had escaped was gone and she had no idea what sent it back to the Ghost Zone. Still, there was nothing she could do, and Sam turned to head for home. This time she did not run; she moved at a fairly slow jog that felt soothing to her still revved muscles as she covered the distance between the school and home. She moved faster than she thought and had already turned the corner to jog sedately onto her own street before the alert went off again, this time flagging someone that Sam didn't really want to deal with.

"Damn it," Sam muttered as she brought herself to a start and raised the alert to see which direction Skulker was heading in.

He was headed for the park, and he was moving fast. Sam knew from experience that it could only mean that Skulker was up to something. She broke into a dead run, not even bothering with sidewalks and streets this time. _No one will ever know_, Sam thought wryly as she vaulted up over another fence and moved as swiftly and silently as a shadow through another backyard and then turned to hop the fence again into an alley that would put her out on the street only a block away from the park.

She stopped for a moment to make sure that Skulker was still there, or at least in that direction before she continued on. Her sides were heaving, but she was still pain free and on her first wind as she bit her lip. No, there he was, Skulker was most definitely in the park itself. She glanced up at the sky absently as she took a deep breath, readying herself to continue on. She lost her breath as she saw Skulker high in the sky.

And saw a shadowy figure floating in front of and slightly above him. A figure that had white hair and glaringly green energy gathered around what she thought were his fists.

"Danny," she whispered, and her feet moved of their own accord, her body following in a sprint that made her previous flight pitiful and leisurely by comparison.

Her eyes were glued to the sky and the blinding blast of ectoenergy as Danny let it loose directly at Skulker, knocking the battle suit back before the small ghost inside maneuvered it back up to face his enemy. There was another blast, this one brighter and Sam was forced to shield her eyes for a moment as she tried not to stumble. She wound her way nimbly through cars and trees and down the sidewalk until she was close enough to feel the impact of Skulker's suit as it hit the ground. She stopped almost at a standstill as she looked up to find Skulker in his true form held tight in Danny's fist. He laughed, and she shivered. Sam had heard him laugh too many times to ever forget what it sounded like, but this laugh was… It wasn't how she remembered it.

Sam took a step forward and stopped again, her hands in fists at her sides as she wondered. This was Danny, but not her Danny. The thought of it being a different Danny was frightening, but after another moment of obsessive study Sam knew that there was no way it was the other one. This Danny wasn't overly built. He was made of long, clean lines easily visible through the simple black hazmat. There was no cape, there were no other changes. Just endless black interrupted by that symbol she'd slapped onto his chest in freshman year.

Even more sure of her eyes, Sam watched as he tugged a thermos—a new, clean, undamaged thermos—from behind his back and thumbed the button on the side. Skulker's body armor disappeared into it, then he shrieked as he too was sucked inside the gaping maw. She took another step, but Sam never even realized she had as Danny lowered himself to the ground, capping the thermos as he went.

He never once looked around as he hooked the thermos to his belt and then shifted back to Fenton in a flash of blue-white light. He sighed suddenly, and Sam's eyes were drawn to the way he actually breathed in and then out with it, and she knew that somehow, no matter what anyone else said or thought, she'd been right all along.

This was Danny. This was _her_ Danny. And he was alive.

She breathed in harshly, almost painfully as one hand clutched her stomach. It was loud in the stillness of the night; he heard it and turned. Her Danny and, oh, god, he looked so different, and so the same. His eyes were still so blue and piercing, even in skin that was more pale than it had been the day he'd gone. There was a bag over his shoulder, crossing his chest, black and nearly invisible against the dark blue of his shirt. He still wore jeans, though somehow he'd given in to boots that she was sure were leather.

It was like seeing a ghost, and not, and Sam couldn't seem to see him clearly as she tried to stare at him. She knew that she tried to say his name, her mouth was open and shaping the word, but Sam couldn't seem to find the breath to do it. Her lungs were frozen inside her even as her heart stuttered along inside her chest, thumping painfully enough that she wondered if it was going to try and tear free of her. A hazy hollow feeling echoed around inside her head, and she could only stare at him trying o say something, to say his name, hello, where have you been for three years and how could you leave us—leave me—but nothing would come.

She was still trying to remember how to speak when he did. "Sam," Danny said, and suddenly everything seemed to work again.

She breathed in and the world gained a sharper focus. The blacks were blacker, the whites were whiter, every color that she could find in the darkness were suddenly startlingly bright in clarity, and she opened her mouth—

Just as he disappeared before her eyes.


	4. Chapter 3

There and Back Again

3

There was a time when finding him might have made her scream with joy, cry, feel the anger that she always expected was inevitable. But that time had passed and Sam found herself wavering as she stood there, heart pounding violently and blood rushing in her ears as she tried to remember to breathe deeply instead of passing out from hyperventilation. There was a small part, a very teeny tiny part of her that was screaming its head off as she blinked at the empty space where Danny had just stood. "He's alive, he's home, he's back!" it was shrieking.

But the larger part of her was beginning to wonder if she'd really seen what her eyes told her that she had. It was a testament of how badly she wanted it to be him; tears pricked her eyes. She had to wonder, it was the only way she could deal with it, with the sudden appearance of someone that was supposed to be dead and gone.

"I'm losing my mind," she whispered as the spots that had danced at the edges of her vision began to recede and clean, cool air began to trace an icy path down to her lungs, granting her a clarity she wasn't sure she wanted.

It was a valid question; was she losing her mind? Well, what little she had to begin with. But still valid. She'd wanted him back for so long; it was entirely possible that her mind had somehow just magically fabricated a Danny out of thin air just for her. The thought drove a pained and amused snort from her as she contemplated it. A Danny Phantom of her very own. Wow, what a wonderful gift that would be. No way would she ever top that.

No matter how strange it was, the faint humor was enough for her to begin thinking again instead of just reacting to the shock. Even with the doubts to her sanity racing around inside her head, Sam found herself moving forward to where Danny had stood before her minutes ago. She hated that she couldn't say moments: she was a seasoned ghost hunter now, she shouldn't have frozen up the way she did. But she had, and she knew she'd stood there in shock and dizziness for more than a few minutes.

A half dozen steps to her there and Sam knelt out of habit, her knees cushioned by the grass. It was luck, she knew, that he hadn't been standing on the concrete of the sidewalk. If he had been then she would never have seen anything, not even a hope of a dampened footstep. But it was too early in the night for the slender blades of grass to be coated with dew and Danny had been flying, not walking at any rate. But he'd been on the grass and Sam's keen eyes could find the telltale signs of disturbance.

He'd dropped down, not landed gently, and his boots had disturbed the grass and dirt and leafy things. Slender blades of grass were bent and crushed and torn askew; there were smallish places where enough had been moved that small clumps of dirt could be seen. Sam would wager that Danny had some of that very same dirt trapped in the treads of his boots wherever he was. There were deeper impressions where his heel had dug in when he'd turned to face her, and there were several leaves that had fallen and dried out, and then broken into pieces under his feet.

Oh yes, someone had just been standing there. She wasn't crazy, and Danny was home.

Her hand trembled as she laid it against the ground, as much to steady herself as to reassure herself that it was real and true and not a figment of her imagination. The grass and dirt were soft and still disturbed. Beneath that her fingers could feel the way the ground itself was compact, harder than the surrounding area—from the weight of a person. Part of her wanted to dig her fingers into the soil, to let it sift through them as she gave in to the burning she could feel in her eyes, the tears that wanted to rise up. It was a stinging pain that traced itself along the back of her throat as she bowed her head and closed her eyes.

She couldn't try, wouldn't. She was on duty and Amity Park came before her tears and the breakdown she wanted to throw herself into. Whether or not Amity knew it, it was depending on her tonight, and tears were a waste that she couldn't give in to. A waste of time, a waste of energy. As wasteful as the way she was crouching here at the edges of the park with her hand clawed into dirt just to reassure herself that he had been _real_.

It was a battle, and one that Sam refused to lose. She was almost grateful for the numb feeling that was beginning to spread across her body. Shock, she was sure, and she'd probably suffer the consequences of not taking care of herself right now. But that was a price she was willing to pay, so long as she could keep herself together. There was no way she could just break down and give way to the maelstrom of emotion that she could feel burning beneath the surface of her skin. It would be… disastrous.

She swallowed and stood, brushing her hand purposefully against the black fabric encasing her thigh to wipe the dirt off. She breathed deep, paused for a moment to close her eyes and will the burning of tears back, then opened them again, eyes clear and lavender and utterly alert. "He's home," she said softly, her jaw clenching on the words as they passed her lips.

Sam drew herself up to her full height and brushed her hair back from her face, not caring that she left a smudge of soil along her cheek. He was home; that was really all that mattered. And just like that her resolve was shattered, because to Sam it really was all that mattered.

Without a second thought she turned and sprinted down the street, sight unseen but unerringly towards the glow of the Fenton Works sign on the home that Danny had used to live in. It wasn't late, it wasn't even close to late, but that thought never even crossed Sam's mind as her feet pounded against the asphalt of the road, the grass and concrete as she crossed a sidewalk. The jarring of the impact didn't faze her as she shifted between the two; instead, Sam concentrated on the sound of her boots against the concrete again, the steady thudding as she raced down the road.

Her ears were attuned as it turned to softer thudding as she crossed again from the concrete to grass, this time into and through a yard and into a darkened alleyway. She was barely aware of the hissing of a startled cat as she emerged another street over and closer to Fenton Works. There was no one to see her headlong flight—in Amity Park the majority of the residents tended to stay inside after dark. It was safer, the ghosts were more alive then, for lack of a better word, and Sam and Tucker had put in a lot of time with the Fenton's on ghost safety. The rest of the residents were under the age of twenty and assured of their own immortality, no matter how fragile it truly was.

But then, and it was an easy admittance, most of the people who had stayed in Amity and still went out had never been to Casper High when Danny Fenton attended. Having gone to school with Danny Phantom did make a difference in how the student body saw themselves, whether they knew who Danny was or not. It was a self awareness by association, because when Danny Fenton had gone to Casper the ghost attacks had been at a high never seen since. A dozen times a day was regular now, but that was it, not just at the high school.

But not many from Sam's graduating class had stayed in Amity; they'd gone, left the ghostly threat behind and learned to pretend that it had never existed. A luxury that Sam didn't have, not when Danny was there, was back, and still just as much a ghost as ever.

It couldn't have taken as long as it felt, but Sam knew from experience—with and without Danny—that adrenaline could make seconds seem like minutes and minutes seem like hours. Hours was exactly what the frenzied flight to Fenton Works felt like before the bright neon of the sign was finally in sight. Tall and imposing with the Ops Center perched as precariously as ever atop the brownstone that Sam knew to be warm and inviting. After all, it was more of a home to her than her actual home was, and the Fenton's had accepted her as part of the family long before Danny's supposed death.

The door was heavy beneath her hand as she pounded on it with a force that made it ache, but Sam never even realized she was hitting it hard enough to make her hand bruise, and then bleed with the impact. Her other hand, much less violent but just as frantic found its way to the doorbell and began pressing it fervently even as she cried out through the door for them to open it.

It was a full minute before she realized that the Fenton house, barring the sign attached to the front of the building, was dark. It didn't matter when she did, though, because this was new that couldn't wait, no matter that Jack and Maddie had been asleep when she arrived. She felt more than saw the light that flicked on just inside the door, like a maniacal electric buzz through the wood and into her hand each time they met. She felt, too, the turn and clock of the lock as it was thrown back and the door tugged inward hastily.

Maddie was there, tired and still half asleep, robe belted haphazardly at her waist, was staring at Sam in surprise. "Sam, what's wrong? Did something happen?" And then Maddie's eyes widened as she saw how Sam was outfitted, and her gaze went sharp with worry as she considered the girl she thought of as a daughter. She'd known almost since the beginning that Sam was playing at ghost hunting with Tucker and Valerie and, in fact, would have stepped in if she hadn't realized how good the three of them actually were.

Instead she always found herself coordinating with them from the sidelines and trying to keep her husband out of the way of the four more experienced ghost hunters in Amity Park. He meant well, but there was no denying that there was something lost in translation. But to find Sam halfway hysterical on her front stoop this late at night… Well, one look at the girl's tear streaked face was enough for her.

"What happened, Sam?"

Sam only paused long enough to draw in a single breath as he eyes darted past Maddie. She could see Jack tugging on a shirt as he felt his way down the stairs, eyes glued on his wife and their late night visitor. She nearly gave into a nerveless laugh as she realized that he was having such a hard time pulling a shirt on because one hand was wrapped tightly around the stock of one of his ectoguns.

But her reason was burning behind her lips, and Sam's eyes were pained as she gasped out, "He's alive. Maddie, Danny's alive."

"What did she say?" Jack's voice was so quiet that the disparity from his normal jovial and booming self made Sam cry that much harder.

"Danny's alive," she managed to get out again through a throat tight with the burning of tears. "He's back. I just saw him in the park."

---

Maddie tolerated no argument from Jack as she told him to call Tucker and Valerie both. The two of them had spent so much time in and out of Fenton Works in the last three years that it was almost like having her old trio of surrogate children back—just without the child that was actually her own. The thought made her chest tighten painfully as she wrapped and arm around Sam, dragging an edge of the robe up to wipe at the girl's tears and try and calm her down to get some semblance of sense out of her.

Except that calming Sam down didn't seem to be working. Maddie was reminded of the weeks after Danny h ad first disappeared. She'd never really explained what had happened all that well, hardly able to get through trying to tell them that he'd been attacked. When Danny was declared dead she'd disappeared into her room for days; it had been the only interaction that Maddie hadn't despised with Sam's parents.

After all, Maddie had already lost her son. She didn't want to lose Sam, too, not when she'd been one of Danny's two closest friends. It never hurt that she'd always expected to be able to call Sam a daughter in truth—Danny's love of the small, sarcastic Goth girl was obvious to everyone except, it seemed, them. And how could she not help another mother whose child was in so much pain?

These tears of Sam's were uncontrollable, and Maddie took Sam upstairs to settle her into the guest room, the room that had once been Danny's. Not anymore, now it was nothing like her son's room, instead painted in soothing creams and vibrant tangerines. The furniture was nothing like Danny's simplistic desk and bed, either, a choice that had been made by the Fenton's one and all as well as the extended family of Danny's friends. It had almost been closure to change Danny's room, but sometimes she still found herself digging out the three boxes of his things that they'd kept and going through them.

But it was, at least, different enough that Sam's crying wasn't made worse. In fact she seemed to calm down a little. The amount was practically immeasurable, but being in his old room seemed to soothe her and Maddie settled Sam onto the bed before grabbing a box of tissues from the dresser and wrecking the prettily displayed fan of paper and handing Sam a handful.

Sam took them but never used them, instead burying her face in the pillow and sobbing still. It seemed to Maddie that it might be best to let the girl cry herself out; it had been the only recourse for Sam's tears when Danny first died. Maddie frowned a little as she backed quietly out of the room leaving Sam to herself and the darkness.

When Danny died.

She'd grown as used to that phrase as she could in three years, even if she'd never wanted it to be true. There had been the initial denial, the desperate and pitiful desire to believe that there'd been a mistake. There was no body, there was no blood, only the eyewitness account of a girl who could barely think about the missing boy without losing control of her emotions. There was no proof, and Maddie had told the police that when they tried at first to close the case with a minimum of investigation. But even with the full investigation that Maddie demanded, they still came to the Sam conclusion, the self same that Maddie and Jack had come up with themselves.

Danny had been killed by a ghost. There was no body because it had been taken with his murderer back to the Ghost Zone. The blame was a difficult thing for her to swallow. As his mother it was her job to protect him, something Maddie had always assumed she was doing by trying to take care of the ectoplasmic menaces that had plagued Amity Park since the inception of the ghost portal. Knowing that Danny was dead because one of the ghosts she hunted had taken it out on him had nearly killed her when she first realized it, and come damn close to destroying her as time passed.

The only thing that saved her was that she still had Jazz to worry about, and Jack. Her beloved Jack, who was now sitting on the couch looking unwontedly serious. His brow was furrowed as he tried not to frown, and Maddie sighed as she sat next to him. She reached up and ran a hand through his hair noticing not for the first time how much more gray had found its way there since Danny's death. He was getting older, and so was she. There were pushing fifty and despite a fairly active lifestyle (at least on her part) age was catching up with them. This night she felt older than her age as she considered Sam's desperate and nearly triumphant words, if she could dig past the pain in the girl's voice to find it.

"Do you think she was right? That she really saw Danny?" Jack asked quietly. "Do you think that he might still be alive?"

She couldn't miss the quiet desperation in her husband's voice, and Maddie shook her head. "I don't know, Jackie. I just—" she bit the sentence off, breathing in sharply, painfully as real hope set itself there. "I just want it to be true," she finally whispered. "I want my baby boy back."

Another knock at the door kept her from breaking down into tears herself, and Maddie watched numbly as Jack got up and headed for the door to open it and usher Tucker and Valerie both in. she could see a worry that was akin to fear on both of their faces, though Tucker hid his better. It was surprising to both Fenton's; Tucker was the much more casual of the three, and to see Valerie more open didn't bode well in either of their minds. But Tucker's open words broke the ice and Maddie was able to push back the thoughts of the girl who was either still crying or asleep in Danny's old room.

"Is Sam okay?" he asked as he sunk into one of the chairs across from the couch. Valerie didn't bother with a chair or the couch or even the floor. Instead she perched herself on the arm of Tucker's chair and watched Maddie and Jack carefully.

If Jack missed the practiced way that Valerie cased their living room, Maddie didn't, and she was surprised that the girl had developed such a strong habit of checking for quick escapes that she did it even in a home she knew inside and out. Maddie smiled up at Jack as he came to sit beside her again, and she was grateful for the strong arm that he wrapped around her as he turned back to Tucker and Valerie. With a sigh and a quick moment she took for herself, to lean into the strength and support of her husband, she turned to them with a grave face.

"Sam is upstairs in Danny's room," she quietly, not surprised that even after three years she would still refer to it as Danny's. She held a hand up to forestall the questions she could see trying to spill from Tucker's mouth, and shook her head. "She's either still too upset, or she's asleep, and we're going to leave her be. She needs to be alone right now."

"So what happened?" Valerie, this time, and Maddie's lips twitched at the sudden impatience. Tucker had known that Sam was the reason they'd been called, but until Maddie had said something about Sam, Valerie hadn't been so sure.

She bit her lip, a habit that she'd had as a child when she was unsure but had grown out of quickly. "There's only one way to come out with this," she started, pausing as she collected her thoughts. "I know it sounds insane, I mean, it _is _ insane, but Sam doesn't lie."

Maddie wondered at Tucker's sudden flinch from those words, but plowed right along knowing that a certain form of hell was about to break loose with her words. She looked back to Jack for a moment and he only nodded, his eyes tired and shadowed.

"Sam saw Danny. She said he was alive."


	5. Chapter 4

There and Back Again

4

In the end Danny never found his way back to the motel he'd intended on resting at. He actually found that his adrenaline had shot so high that rest was mostly a moot point. Besides, there was no way to sleep as he mentally catalogued the similarities and differences in Sam. She was so much the same and so very different from the woman he'd known, even if thinking about her so much caused no end of heartache. Seeing her only seemed to make his homecoming more real, much more than the habitual ghost fights.

Better real, though, than the surreal feeling that draped across him like an unfamiliar skin as he stepped foot into his house. It was his in every sense of the word, had been his for years even if it hadn't realized it. Stone and mortar and dulled and faded clapboard; but it was home.

Danny was surprised that no one had taken the chance on buying it, but he was even more surprised that it was on the market at all. That fact only drove home even more the years that he had missed in this, his Amity Park. Danny could only sigh and run a wearied hand through his hair as he wandered from room to empty room. It was still early—he'd been at the realtor's office well before it opened and had made them an offer that was impossible to refuse. The house was his again, keys in hand and paperwork already being filed on the sale.

It needed some help, maybe more than some. Danny already knew that the flooring in the living room needed to be updated. The carpet was a hideous gray-brown color, but that would only be a few hours worth of work. Beneath it, he knew, lay a hardwood floor that only needed a light sanding and sealing to make it look as handsome as the day it had been laid. The walls were a uniform sterile white, but painting would be done quickly and efficiently. The hall and the master bedroom needed the carpet pulled up, too. But the other two bedrooms needed to have new carpeting laid down.

He already knew that, though.

The only thing he hadn't expected was the partially remodeled kitchen. The previous owner had started to update it and make it a more attractive sell. The only thing that had stopped them was final costs, and at that Danny would have new cabinets and appliances installed within forty-eight hours. It would be different enough that it wouldn't hurt. He had to make sure of that; the slate on the floor and the hunter green granite counters were different enough that the change was already visible.

It helped him not to see blue and yellow and brightly colored things strewn haphazardly across them.

There was no furniture yet, Danny was saving that for after he'd gotten the basics fixed. Why bother moving things in that would only have to be moved back out while he worked? It would be a good thing, the sweat and labor of putting the house to rights. At least there was nothing he couldn't do that needed to be done. Danny could work most tools for the remodeling, after all he'd done it once before, but plumbing and drywall were well beyond his meager remodeling skills.

"No time like the present," he said to no one in particular. There were still hours of daylight left in the day and he'd already managed to place a roof over his head and have his money placed properly into a bank. A job could wait for a little, even if it was deviating from his plan. Besides, he still needed to take care of his background before he could take the chance of job hunting.

His trip to Amity Park's hardware store was almost bittersweet and would probably have hurt a lot more if Danny hadn't looked forward to his project so much. Before lunchtime he'd already bought or rented the tools he needed and had them delivered along with gallons of paint, the cabinets that would be installed the next morning, and anything and everything else he might have wanted. His one true splurge that was for no reason other than pure want was a ceiling fan for the master bedroom. He'd always enjoyed moving air as he slept and found the quiet hum to be pleasant background noise. His wife never had.

By the time Danny should have been sitting down for lunch he'd pulled up the carpets in the living room, hallway and master bedroom. It, and the padding beneath it, were now piled in front of the garage waiting for the next trash day. Danny himself had stripped down to jeans and boots and nothing else as he took sandpaper by hand to rub at the places the industrial floor sander had missed. He was hot, sweaty, tired and all around filthy when unfamiliar footsteps echoed on his freshly sanded hardwood floor.

Startled Danny's eyes shot up. It had been a while since anyone had snuck up on him. Then again, it had also been a while since he had to reacquaint his hearing to normal sound after running said industrial sander for several hours.

"So she was right; you _are_ alive."

Her voice was like a memory from a nightmare, and Danny's eyes were wide and wary as he pursed his lips and climbed to his feet. He tucked the sandpaper in his back pocket and dusted his hands off as he met Valerie's eyes. His eyes never left hers, no matter that Danny wanted to go ghost and run for it. Valerie stumbling upon him before he'd seen his family was never in the plan, or even the revised plan. But still, he had to wonder how quickly she'd found him, and as a civilian at that.

"How'd you find me?" he asked, pleased but unsurprised that his voice was as steady as it was.

She arched a brow at him and Danny nearly smiled. Valerie didn't seem to have changed all that much from one life to the next. She was just as sure of herself as ever she had been, and her sleek style as a teenager seemed to have transcended to adulthood. She was calm and polished in a pair of dove gray slacks and a soft yellow blouse. There was a matching gray blazer over one arm and a folder tucked in her hand there. Her hair was still long, something that relieved Danny. The short military-like crew cut from that aborted future had suited her then. Now the sleek waves were more in line, just like when he'd left so many years before.

She lifted the hand with the folder and waved it casually at him. "You bought your house from the realty I work for," she answered with a half smile. "Have to admit, besides being unbelievably pissed at you, I'm impressed. Whatever you've been doing, you've done well for yourself." She paused and the smile disappeared, much like Danny still wanted to. "Now where the hell have you been and why did you let them all believe you were dead?"

"Uh," he began and stopped, one hand rising to rub the back of his neck in a nervous habit that refused to die. "I had things I needed to do?"

"Smooth answer, Fenton," she scoffed sarcastically. Then the anger was gone as quickly as it had come. "How could you do it? Don't you know how badly you hurt them? Us? God, Danny, do you know how badly you hurt Sam?"

Danny's face twisted in a grimace of misery. He didn't really have a defense; in all honesty Danny had planned on avoiding answering it as much as possible. He knew that his avoidance was going to be one kind of answer, however misleading. But he couldn't just come out and tell the truth. Better that they all think he'd run off to marry some girl none of them knew. He sighed knowing that he was only going to be hurting Sam all the much worse.

He closed his eyes before answering, knowing that Valerie wouldn't need the eye contact to accept the truth, however small it was. "I've had to live with that every day since I left. But I had to go."

Danny didn't open his eyes as he heard Valerie walking away; disgusted he expected. The footsteps stopped and he knew she was still there. "They're all looking for you, Danny. Don't make them wait too much longer."

The footsteps resumed and like that Valerie was gone and Danny's reserve was gone. He didn't bother opening his eyes, only rubbed them tiredly and wondered why it hurt so much to hear Valerie say the things that he already knew. As much as it had hurt to leave, the homecoming… it hurt more. He breathed in, his breath hitching as he did before letting it out slowly as he struggled to rein in his wayward emotions.

No matter how much it hurt, he still had things to do. His eyes opened and they were clear as Danny tugged the sandpaper from his pocket and moved to drop it in the plastic bag that was serving as his garbage until he did more involved shopping. The day was little more than half way done and he could have the floors sealed and drying by dusk.

He let his mind go numb as he grabbed a broom.

---

Danny counted it as exceptional luck that he was a halfa. First and foremost because he'd actually survived the accident that had changed him. Secondly because he couldn't walk on his newly sealed floor for at least four hours, and only one of them had passed. He couldn't go anywhere near the living room or the hall or what would soon be his room; the dining room was overtaken and the slate tile covered with his various tools and remodeling supplies. The kitchen wasn't even worth considering as a changing room. Instead he used one of the other two bedrooms, the one that would become his office when he'd finished remodeling.

He chose with some care from the meager clothes he'd brought—Danny had intended on replenishing his wardrobe once getting settled. He had one pair of dress pants, but they were too wrinkled. That, and he didn't want anyone to know exactly how long he'd agonized over reuniting himself with his family and had actually worried about what to wear. He decided on jeans, casual and comfortable but a dark blue that made him look a little more… grown, he supposed.

He chose to pair it with a dress shirt that she had bought for him. He'd never really paid attention to clothes until she'd told him he needed to. She'd made a damn good argument, too, because he'd missed out on two good jobs because (according to her) he hadn't dressed for the position. She'd dressed him for his third interview. He got that job.

The blue shirt was long sleeved and almost corporate looking. He'd worn it with suit and tie on more than one occasion, but this time he skipped the tie and left the top buttons undone to make it more casual. It worked, especially since he rolled the sleeves up nearly to his elbows. He thought about a jacket, but it was still too warm to wear one, even if the thought of wearing one made him feel like it would be a kind of armor to protect him from the confrontation he knew was coming.

With his boots on Danny only ran his fingers through his hair knowing that getting it under true control was only going to happen with possibly frightening amounts of hair products. In the blink of an eye he'd shifted from human to ghost and shot up through the ceiling to hover over his house and cast a wary eye across the darkened scene before him. Amity Park was lit up in only the way a small town could be, bright and warm and welcoming without the garishness that city lights often gave off from the air. It was home, his home, and Danny couldn't help the smile that graced his lips as he flew towards the only thing in Amity that made it seem less like a small town and more like something else.

The Op Center wasn't too bright, even if the neon of the Fenton Works sign was, and Danny hovered invisible above it long enough to know that it hadn't moved from its berth since the last time he had taken it. Those three days had been some of the most frightening of his life at the time, and even if he'd lived through much worse since then the memory of nearly losing his family was enough to make his stomach twist with anxiety.

It had been only the third time he'd truly pushed his powers to their limits, and he'd only been fourteen. In the years since, he'd pushed himself farther than he could have imagined at that age. He'd always prevailed, he'd always had the help of his friends and his family, even if they didn't always know it or understand. And now he was walking into the lion's den with no one but himself.

Danny very nearly turned tail and fled right then, but he didn't.

Instead, Danny forced himself to drop in the air, his altitude rapidly traded for gravity and humanity as he lit on his parents' doorstep. This time he remembered to cast a quick but thorough glance around before letting go of his ghost. Somehow, the loss of his ghost half made Danny's nerves jangle all the worse. Even if his ghost half wasn't a proper ghost and had more in common with humanity than any normal ghost, it still afforded him a sense of emotional numbness when he chose to avail himself of that particular trait of his ghostly heritage.

Despite the feeling that everything was about to blow up in his face, Danny reached a hand out and knocked.

The house was lit up, nearly every window had a light blazing from within, but he could hear the murmuring roar of his family from through the door and knew that he'd been heard. Somehow the fact that no one actually raced for the door was comforting. It meant that they weren't expecting him and he would have the element of surprise. He could only pray that it would offset the furor that was about to happen.

If he could have seen inside, Danny might have given in to his uncharacteristic urge for cowardice. If he'd known that everyone he'd been close to was inside, barring his sister, he would have turned tail and flown back to his new house and tried to work the fear that sat sickly within him by coaxing the remodeling along late into the night. But none of Danny's powers included superhuman hearing to distinguish each voice, or x-ray vision to let him see through the door.

The thought to take a quick glimpse through the house invisibly and intangibly never even crossed his mind.

So instead he stood on the stoop quietly and nervously as the porch light was flipped on and the lock clicked over with a sound that seemed to echo in the quiet of the night. Light poured out as it opened and his mother stood there, eyes expectant and worried.

"You're early, Ja—" The words died on Maddie's lips as she saw him standing there and she swayed against the door for a moment, her eyes slipping half closed before his father moved to steady her, catch her if need be, and wonder what was wrong.

It struck Danny as terribly wrong that his father, the ever garrulous Jack Fenton, was at a loss for words as he held his wife to his side. Danny tried to smile but found he couldn't as the fear and worry he'd been nursing since Valerie's visit did its best to claw its way into his throat. He swallowed convulsively and offered them a barely hopeful look.

"Hi, Mom," he said softly. "Dad."

His eyes flitted past them and he found himself being pinned to the spot by Tucker's green gaze, and Sam standing next to him looking horribly pale. Valerie was there too, and she gave him a stare that was nearly approving even as it condemned him for what he'd done. Danny swallowed again and had the terrible realization that he was going to be sick.

And then his mother lurched towards him and wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him down so that she could hug him tightly enough that he could barely breathe. His neck was wet and Danny understood that she was crying, but before he could stammer out any type of apology the rest of his breath was squeezed from him as his father wrapped his own solid arms around both son and wife. Before Danny even understood what was happening he realized that his father was crying, too, and so was he.

"Oh, Danny, you're alive," he heard his mom whisper, even as his father was echoing the sentiment in a much less coherent manner as he held on to them both and cried just as hard as they did. In his mind he'd only just left them, and the knowledge that had threatened to break him down so many times reared back up as he bowed his head beside hers, face pressed against the familiar garish orange of his father's hazmat.

"I'm sorry, Mom, I'm so sorry," he choked out, unashamed of his tears even as he condemned the shame of the lies that were woven with truth and about to roll from his tongue. "I had to go, I couldn't stay. I'm so sorry, so damned sorry."

He pulled back even as they did, his eyes steady if tear blurred as he looked first at his father and then back at Maddie. She reached a hand up and ran it down his cheek, tears continuing to spill down her cheeks, and Danny really looked. She seemed so much older than her forty-seven years, and he knew that it was his fault. The faint lines at her eyes and mouth rested on his shoulders; she had always been so youthful looking. He blinked back another spate of tears as he took in the gray that was beginning to thread its way through her vibrant hair. Almost fearfully he looked back up to his father.

The signs were there too. The older Fenton had lost weight and, while still a larger than life man, he was no longer as solid as he'd been. There wrinkles, not as pronounced as his mother's, and Jack's matching gray streaks had widened and spread so that nearly half of his hair had gone gray. So much change in only three years; yet another reason Danny hated what he'd, no matter that he had to do it.

"Danny, where? Why?" Jack's voice was rough and much softer than he was wont to be.

Danny shook his head as his parents drew him inside and closed the door behind him. His thumb brushed his now bare ring finger even as he opened his mouth. "I can't… I can't talk about it right now. Maybe later," and his heart stuttered in his chest as he deviated from his plan yet again. Now, when the assumptions were made, some would begin to know otherwise.

He could see it on Tucker's face as he looked up to meet his best friend's eyes, could see the faintest trace of dawning comprehension in them as Tucker stepped forward and grabbed Danny in a tight hug. Male dignity was tossed aside as Danny hugged Tucker back tightly, swallowing against the burning of tears again. It was almost embarrassing for him, one of the most feared ghosts in the known world, and here he was being driven to tears constantly.

Valerie followed Tucker when he finally let Danny go and only slipped her arms around him in the briefest of hugs as she whispered, "Welcome back, Danny," very softly in his ear. As she pulled herself away he could see forgiveness in her eyes.

And then there was only Sam left, standing in jeans and a t-shirt and face devoid of make-up as she stared at him with shadowed eyes. She made no move toward him and Danny couldn't take his eyes from hers. There were so many things that he wanted to say to her, the first of them being an apology. He had so many things to apologize to her for. She was the one who'd been there the day it had happened, the day that he'd disappeared. She could have been the one of them worst affected; she'd been the witness.

He'd hurt her so badly. He knew he hurt her, he'd watched over her for weeks after he'd gone. It had been the only thing he could do during the long recuperation he'd had to endure. He'd only made it worse when he disappeared on her the night before. But how could he have dealt with it any differently when fear was such a powerful motivator?

"I bought the old Almsley place at the edge of town. I'm living there now while I fix it up." As he spoke his eyes never left Sam's, and he could see tears of her own welling up to make her eyes glisten much like the precious stones they so resembled. "I'm not going anywhere anymore. I'm back. For good."

Even as he said it Danny was moving to her; the way she stood there silently crying was killing him inside. It was his fault and even if he couldn't just take her in his arms and kiss them away, he could still hold her. Sam had the same thought—she was moving to him even as he took his first step. They met in the middle, oblivious to anyone else around them as Danny held her tightly, face buried in her hair as he just breathed the clean, warm familiar scent of her in.

"Please don't leave me again," she whispered into his neck. Danny could only hold her.


	6. Chapter 5

There and Back Again

5

There was a time when Vlad Masters performed daily surveillance on the Fenton house. Those were the days when he'd thought, quiet accurately to his mind, that all he needed to do to have his beloved was to eliminate her oaf of a husband and suborn her son. It had been a masterful plan; once those two were taken care of the daughter would fall in line and Maddie would, naturally, realize that she'd wasted so much time on a man who could never love her like he could, never hope to provide for her and be an adequate partner in her scientific endeavors. There was a time.

Then Daniel was gone and two years worth of planning had been ruined. Of course he still could have eliminated the bumbling oaf. Jack Fenton was an easy target after his son's death, had remained an easy target ever since then.

But he couldn't do it. No matter how much he wanted Maddie himself, how far he'd go to make her his, he still wanted her to be her. And killing her husband then would have killed her. That was unacceptable, and unforgivable. He wasn't a monster who would make her life worse, not when she was depending on the fool. However erroneous that decision was, Maddie needed Jack, and Vlad couldn't simply kill him out of hand.

Somehow, somewhere along the way he'd stopped doing it so often. He'd watched daily after Daniel's death; it had been nearly too painful to watch her mourn the loss of her son. Weeks after he'd stopped watching daily, started checking on her only every other day. It pained him to see what was left of her family close ranks around her, to watch Maddie and Jack grow closer together. It seemed like with the loss of one, the ones that were left were all the more important.

When Jasmine had gone back to school, he'd stopped watching every other day and only watched for her twice a week. It had been the way began it, and the way he ended it. He'd hoped, he had so hoped that when the shock and pain of Daniel's death had passed that Maddie would stop depending on her idiotic husband as much as she had begun to. It hadn't, they only grew closer together and Vlad found that he could barely stomach watching her relearning happiness with him once a week.

It had become once a week, then once every other week, once every third week… Until one day Vlad found that he only watched for his wonderful, lovely, beautiful Maddie when the comfort of the programmed hologram wasn't enough. There were some days when he couldn't stand the hollow sound of the programmed words and would watch her tirelessly for hours. There were more days when the tinny echo was preferable to hearing her speaking to _him_ no matter how much happier she seemed since the tragedy.

And then there was yesterday, the day that Samantha Manson had presented herself in the middle of the night in sobs and tears and claiming to have seen Daniel, alive and well and returned. It was pure serendipity that Vlad was watching then. The oaf had been asleep, but Maddie, beloved Maddie, had been lying awake when the sensors had picked up the racket downstairs. Vlad had hurried to the controls to shift to the various cameras he'd hidden inside the house as Maddie rose and raced downstairs.

She was poetry in motion, even exhausted and nearly frantic with worry. And such a loving woman as she brushed her own rampant emotion aside to comfort the hysterical girl. And now he sat in his laboratory watching as the prodigal son made his triumphant, if somewhat belated return from the dead. Embracing his parents, reuniting with friends. And of course Daniel wouldn't keep himself from his would-be lover.

The boy had no idea how many plans he'd wrecked and made useless with his petty disappearing act. Vlad saw, literally, red as he watched the touching scene that was unfolding over his wireless surveillance. Three years. Three _years_. Wasted, and for what? For nothing since the arrogant little brat wasn't dead and never had been. All of that time, time he could have spent with Maddie by his side, worshipping and adoring her and making her a veritable queen of queens and raising the ungrateful child to rule the greatest business empire ever built.

Vlad had given blood for his cause. Certainly not his own, but blood had been shed to afford Daniel and his mother the comforts and status being part of Vlad's dominion would have given them both. And Daniel, like a foolish, selfish little child had hared off on his own for some unknown reason and destroyed the future Vlad had worked so hard to build.

Sparks flew as violent magenta ectoenergy crashed into the wall of screens making the center diameter crack and break and smoke. The monitors that had been destroyed all flickered in and out with gray-black snow, all that they could pick up now after the angry outburst. He rose, black darklight flashing at his waist to rise and leave Plasmius behind, red eyes narrowed and dangerous, sharpened canines clenched in rage. One gloved hand reached out to press a small button at the edge of the desk, and Vlad moved past it as the air crackled for a moment and then when still and quiet.

"I want what is mine," he stated to that still silence. "And the key to getting it is Daniel."

"Sir?" The voice that answered was unsure, even hesitant as it tried to decipher exactly what its master was ordering.

"Daniel is the key," Vlad nearly shouted, and then controlled himself. When he spoke again his voice was calm and collected, if barely hiding a razor edge beneath it. "And the key to Daniel is his friends. Remove them."

---

If Danny hadn't avoided everyone for two days, he certainly hadn't embraced his return the way all of them wanted, Danny included. It was harder than he expected to just simply speak to them. So many secrets to keep, and so many things he wanted to say, and could, but never found the courage. How, exactly, was he supposed to tell them how much he missed them, and how sorry he was? The words always were inadequate to him, and he didn't know another way to say them.

He'd had dinner with his family the night before, just the family. It had been strange and strained and just plain weird, but the tension was easily interrupted by the many smiles his parents shared, the loving looks that would once have made him uncomfortable and now only made him wonder what he'd done to deserve such people as his parents. Jazz and Danny had even shared an almost knowing look as he asked her to dinner, to join him with Sam and Tucker and, if not explanations, some sort of conversation that might give them peace of mind.

He filled the time in between with hard work and sweat as he made his house into a home. Or as close to a home as he could without the family he missed inside it. The floors were done, a satiny smooth honey oak now that they'd been finished, and the painting was complete. Each room that was finished had a personality, he liked to think. The master bedroom was a deep and endless blue that gave the wood floor depth. The hallway and living room were an almost soothing red-brown that made the floors darker and more mysterious. The kitchen now had cabinets that were shades darker than the floor and walls in a bright and welcoming tangerine.

Besides the painting that had been his greatest concern, making the kitchen functional, and with the new black appliances installed it made the remaining two bedrooms and bathrooms the only incomplete rooms to the house. As long as he pretended the dining room was still his catch all for his tools. The garage would have been the logical place, he supposed, but he'd already spent another hefty amount to have a mode of transportation that didn't involve ghost powered flight. Sam, at least, was sure to appreciate the black hybrid parked therein.

It was a plus, since he'd insisted on picking everyone up and chauffeuring them to the restaurant. As per his instructions (handsomely disguised as a request) the location of dinner was a secret and completely his treat. He dressed much as he had the night he'd gone home, and again the night he'd had dinner with his parents, but this time instead of the gentle blue or the robust red he donned a deep green. Again he remained casual with dark blue jeans and his ever present black boots, but he felt more himself as he drove to pick his sister up than he had any time in the days prior, barring when he was alone.

"You've done well by yourself, little brother," she said with quiet approval as she slid into the seat next to him. Danny gave her a smile.

"With you as a role model how could I do anything else?" The charm was appreciated, even if she rolled her eyes in sisterly affection.

"You look nice," he said softly as he headed down the street to Tucker's apartment. It was a quick walk, an even quicker drive, and Jazz didn't answer him. He supposed he deserved it until he realized that she was staring straight ahead with a dangerously glassy look to her eyes. He fell back on silence; it was still a volatile and emotional situation and he didn't want to drive her to tears.

Tucker was more exuberant when he climbed into the backset, offering a "nice ride" as he settled in. the conversation was more animated and less fraught with teary danger with Tucker along, and Danny took the time on the way to Sam's to tell them what he'd been doing since his return. Jazz was more amused, though interested, while Tucker wanted to know more about the power tools. Danny supposed it really was a male prerogative to question the vagaries of anything capable of power driven destruction.

The conversation lagged again as Tucker was forced to give Danny directions to Sam's apartment. He wasn't sure why, but Danny had assumed that she still lived at home. Foolish, he knew, but it made him feel like Sam had moved on when she moved out. Not that he had any claim on her after having spent so many years gone, but the silence that echoed inside the car as Jazz told Danny of Sam's parents, and her grandmother, was painful enough without the added tension he was trying to fight off.

She was waiting when he pulled to the curb in front of her building, and the quiet hellos were all that they exchanged. He did try and find her eyes in the rear view mirror, but Sam was studiously studying the darkening streets as they drove and all he could find were Tucker's. He looked away very quickly, then, but not quickly enough to miss the way Tucker looked between Danny and Sam and gave him a concerned but unsurprised stare in the mirror. Despite any and all attempts there was no more talk, and Danny spent the thankfully short drive fretting over his impulsive dinner invitation. He couldn't help but wonder if the reuniting of Team Phantom shouldn't have been done one at a time, but the thought of being alone with Sam right then was more than he could bear.

No one could deny that they were all uncomfortable. Jazz didn't bother trying anything; it was a fair assumption that any and all of them would be annoyed with her attempts to use psychology to diffuse the situation. It was an even better guess that any attempts at normal conversation would be targeted unfairly as the same, so she stayed quiet and spent the ride making discreet glances at her brother and trying to reconcile the gangly and unfinished teenager she'd known with the man who drove silently beside her.

Tucker said nothing out of respect for Sam. He'd been her rock when she needed one after Danny's disappearance, and the quiet but steady support he could offer her was all he felt comfortable with now. Danny had gone, left them all behind for something he couldn't—wouldn't—explain. He wanted to stay firmly on Sam's side, a decision made in anger, but he had a right to the anger. He could only be relieved by the fact that he was able to bury it so well and not take it out on the man who'd once been his best friend. Whether they still where was something left to be seen.

But Sam spent the drive in silence because she couldn't seem to find her voice, or her footing, or any type of equilibrium. Even as Jazz and Tucker were becoming more animated as Danny pulled to the valet service at D'Malio's. She wasn't even sure which was making any of their heads spin the most. She expected that Jazz was most impressed by the house that Danny had bought, perhaps even more impressed because he'd undertaken some semi-serious renovations and nearly completed them in three days. Tucker seemed to be most impressed by the car—Sam forgave him for that, he was male and attracted to things that ran on horsepower.

But Sam found herself off center simply because Danny didn't think twice as he used the valet service of one of the most expensive restaurants in Amity Park. Even the casual air of confidence and self assurance he exuded as he led them inside made her take yet another look at him and reevaluate what it was she was seeing. It was wrong on so many levels; the Danny that she knew was the Danny she had stumbled across three nights before in the park, a self conscious Danny who was nearly petrified of being found out.

Sam had a hard time reconciling the man she'd seen then with the one who was even now seated in the booth across from her, glancing to his left to compliment his sister (for what seemed to be the third or fourth time that evening) on her taste in clothes. Sam studied Jazz with a practiced eye. Despite the fact that Sam herself often chose to dress simply she'd always had an eye for what worked and what didn't on a person. Part of it she attributed with being female, the other part she cursed her mother for on occasion.

But Danny had neither estrogen nor Manson heritage in his veins, and there was something definitely off; the fact was, he should never have thought twice about Jazz's sweater and slacks. But he knew the pants to be designer, and the sweater to be a well fitted cashmere. Sam knew because she'd given Jazz the sweater for Christmas only the year before. The bright Kelly green complimented her coloring and set off the brilliant red of her hair.

That was strike one.

Then there was the Danny who could talk knowledgably with Tucker, something that only his coworkers ever seemed to be able to do. It wasn't that Danny knew the ins and outs of the things Tucker was working on, it was more along the lines that he knew anything at all and understood the majority of Tucker's explanations. The graceful demurral of in depth explanation on what he didn't understand refused to sit well with Sam, either.

That was strike two.

She wasn't sure what strike three was yet, but Sam knew that something was terribly wrong. It was Danny, but he wasn't the boy she knew, the boy she'd loved so desperately. The boy she still wanted to love because his memory was so vivid inside her mind every second of the day, and sometimes more. He was nothing like the Danny she remembered, not shy or awkward or unsure of himself. He seemed so… She almost laughed in the middle of Tucker waving his fork at Danny from next to her, a piece of steak poked precariously on the tines. She wanted to say that Danny acted so grown up, a sentence that was just absurd.

Of course he was grown up; he was twenty years old. He could obviously support himself, and the fact that whatever he'd been doing must have worked was screaming at her every time she looked at him. And still Sam felt like it was wrong, because the Danny she knew could never be this serious with his best friends for company. Even Tucker's persistent questioning didn't seem to be very upsetting to him.

"So the ghost scene," Tucker said as Sam picked at her salad. "Where you lived, was it as hectic as it can be here?"

Sam glanced up at Danny from beneath her lashes as he answered without thinking. "Actually, it was worse. We were pretty sure that it was because of me."

Sam startled up; it was the first thing that Danny had said that wasn't, apparently, carefully screened. He'd kept up the pretense through dinner that he'd spent his time away alone, and now there was a frighteningly important _we_. Sam's stomach clenched worriedly in her belly as she turned to Tucker. Both Tucker and Jazz seemed to be surprised by Danny's words, even as Sam's heart twisted.

"We?" Tucker asked.

"We."

It was soft, hesitant and pained, and Sam couldn't look away as Danny's eyes flickered to where his left hand was, on the table, napkin carelessly crumpled within. It was Jazz who made the first move, who seemed to understand the words best. Slowly, like time was crawling just because Sam wanted to know what Danny meant so badly, Jazz reached for his hand and wrapped it within hers, forcing him to drop the white linen on the table and let his fingers in plain sight once again. She tried then, she really tried to look away, but Sam found that the sudden burst of fear forced her immobile as Jazz turned Danny's hand to better see it in the dim restaurant light.

And there was the telltale sign, a band of pale skin on the third finger, smooth where all else was worn and tanned.

"You were married," Tucker whispered, his voice echoing in the silence.

Danny didn't answer, only tugged his hand back from Jazz's and laid it in his lap as his fork found its way to the table beside his plate. Still Sam's eyes were locked onto him, wide and stricken and quite possibly half way to tears as her hands dropped to her lap so that she could worry the sleeves of her silk shirt without witness. And then Danny's eyes flickered up to hers and she begged him with her eyes to deny it, to tell her that it wasn't true and that whatever it was that had passed between them the night he returned to his parents' house wasn't a lie.

It had felt so real, so true, the things he said to her, because they had been for _her_ ears before anyone else. The way he looked at her that night, bright blue eyes burning darker as he watched her, wary even as she hesitated to give him a chance. The way he'd come to her, wrapped his arms around her like she was the only woman in his life, like she was important, like she was… treasured.

And now he was sitting across from her, mouth closed and blue eyes pleading. His silence was answer enough. She supposed that could be strike three.


	7. Chapter 6

There and Back Again

6

To say that dinner was an awkward occasion was an understatement, at least in Danny's mind. He hadn't really even looked at the bill when it came, only dropped a random credit card down (and thank god he'd taken care of all of the little things that made life at least a little more familiar) and signed away. Between Jazz and her quasi-discreet piercing stares and Tucker's myriad comments that didn't really mean anything until paired with everything that had happened, Danny's nerves were as taut as a wire before they made it back out to the car. The truly sad thing was that he couldn't even avoid talking to them since he'd issued the invitation. But he could, and did, completely ignore any questions that he thought were too dangerous.

Which was almost all of them, but Danny was very quick to point out that he'd never promised answers to everything. Just reassurance that he was home, that he was well, and that… That pretty much nothing was the same and never would be again. At least that didn't have to actually be said, because Danny could feel the confusion and near hostility radiating off of all of them more than once during dinner, and it only made the silence as they waited for the car even more uncomfortable.

Jazz was trying to diffuse the tension, but Danny could barely keep quiet and not point out that she was the primary source of the anger at the moment. Tucker was just confused, a clean and simple emotion that Danny could relate to and regret, knowing that it was his fault. Sam… Oh, Sam. He could taste the betrayal on his tongue, so thick was it that he didn't even need to look at her. It wouldn't make a difference—she refused to look at him, anyway. In fact she'd barely said more than three words after the slip of tongue that set the mood for the evening.

It was easy to not speak as he drove Jazz home. Easy not to lay an accusing glare at Jazz and demand that she find somewhere else to live instead of being the first to be dropped off. He already knew what was happening, had to have known since the moment he set out to pick all three up. He just hadn't quite realized it until he turned the car for the nearest house. Danny thought that he might have been hoping for a more friendly atmosphere, even if the unanimous best friend vibe no longer included him, Danny'd hoped that they could at least be friends again.

She said goodnight as she slipped out of the car, and Danny hated that the hug she gave him at the door was forced. Jazz was his sister, they were at least supposed to care about each other. But the hurt and the doubt and the damned fierce anger was still there, even if she looked bothered by the tension.

He gave her a half smile. "Don't worry about it, Jazz. I get it."

That was the bitch of it, he really did, and Danny didn't even try for a faked easy camaraderie when Tucker got out. He waited, as he had with Jazz, until he was sure that his once friend was safely inside. It was the least he could do since the rift was of his own making, and was going to stay that way until he could find a way around it. Or until it was all over and they knew where he'd been for three years, what he'd been doing. When Tucker's living room light flicked on and Danny could see it he pulled away from the curb with a silent glance in the rearview mirror.

And there she was, Sam, _his_ Sam, staring steadily back. But there was no humor or amusement in her eyes, not even forgiveness. Just a steady unending chill that radiated out from her to make his stomach grow cold, even more than his ice powers could leech his own warmth away. He knew it for cowardice when he tore his eyes from hers and put the car back on the road headed to her apartment a little too fast. Nerves, that, and he eased off the accelerator. A speeding ticket wouldn't be a wise thing to pick up, it would really make things awkward since he was sure anyone who would remember him believed him dead.

She didn't say a word as they drove smoothly along but he could feel the way her eyes bore into him; he was sure that he'd have little burn marks on the back of his head because of it. Even as he turned onto her street her eyes never left him and the habitual way that he checked the rear view mirror proved it—every time he looked in it her eyes flickered to his in a way that was all at once unnerving and… wanted. Even if she couldn't stand him anymore, even if she was so close to hating him that the semantics of the word made no difference… He still wanted to be in her eyes.

But not with this calculating coldness that she gave him as he pulled up in front of her building, parking the car at the side of the road and taking it out of gear before turning it off. He was out of the car in a single smooth motion and heading around to open her door, just as he had done for Jazz, as she opened it herself, easing out and standing with a face that was utterly blank. The look that she gave him, though, should have melted flesh from bone, and Danny rethought offering his arm to her. He'd done that with Jazz, but his sister hadn't had this unbridled rage in her eyes in the moment that he did.

So instead Danny started following her up the walk and hoping to god that she didn't kill him.

"You don't have to walk me to my door, you know," she tossed back over her shoulder as she dug through her small purse for her key. "I'm a big girl; I've been taking care of myself for three years now."

He flinched at the ice in her voice and the words, too. He deserved it, and so much more; it wasn't like he couldn't see exactly where she—hell—where all of them were coming from. He bit his lip, worrying it in a fashion that was unlike him. "I know that, Sam," he offered quietly. "I just…"

There was no way he could finish the words as she stopped in front of her door and turned to stare at him. To glare, to silently condemn him with the anger and hurt and hate in her eyes. "I don't care, Danny. Whatever you say, whatever excuse you have, I don't want to hear it." Her voice was still cold, but beneath the frigidity Danny thought he could hear something else, something very close to breaking, and he hated himself for that in her as much as she must.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I was doing what I thought was best."

"For who?" and this time her voice was hot and burning, heated in a way that only anger could make it.

He proffered his hands, palm up, and met her eyes without a second thought. "For all of us."

"For all of us," she echoed back at him weakly, face suddenly slack and disbelieving. This time her words weren't quiet and angry, this time they were loud, outraged, and so damned painful. "It was best to leave us behind? Your family? Your friends? Your _best_ friends, Danny, god! We thought you were dead." She poked a finger out at him and into his chest. "You son of a bitch. You do that to us, put us all through that hell, and then you expect us to just take you back with open arms and no questions?"

She was well and truly wound up, and the first trickles of three years' worth of fear and pain and just wondering welled up inside her to spill from her mouth. "Where were you, Danny? Where were you when we were looking for you? When we thought you were dead? What were you doing?" Sam's eyes narrowed to amethyst slits against her pale face as she saw his mouth open and close, knowing that he wasn't going to answer.

Her jaw clenched and she fought against the very real burn of tears at the edges of her eyes. "You just ran away and damn the consequences, the people who care about you? Who love you?"

"Sam," he started, pleadingly, but she cut him off with her hand to his face in a stinging slap that echoed against the building.

"Shut up. Just _shut up_." She stopped and breathed in; Danny could see the way her eyes shone in the pale light of the streetlamp doing its best to reach the shadows in front of her door.

"You're a bastard and I wish I could hate you for it. You hurt us, Danny," and Sam's words grew harsh at this, Danny's face twisting in anguish with her words. "You hurt _me_. You just left, and you just come back, and you won't tell us anything. And then—"

This time Sam was cut off as the familiar blue mist slipped past Danny's lips and he shoved her back into her door, his body covering her as another familiar ghost came barreling in behind them, just where the two had stood moments before. She shivered as the bright silver-white rings swept across Danny's body to leave black hazmat behind and a pair of rather furious bright green eyes fixed to hers. His mouth thinned as it turned to a frown, and his teeth bared before he pushed away from her, hands glowing with vicious green ectoenergy as they swept past her face and away from the wall.

"Another welcome home party?" Danny asked with a dark smirk as he lifted into the air to hover in front of Sam, watching the ghost that had attacked where it, too, floated beyond the shadows of the building.

Wine dark flames rose in the dark, radiating out from the Fright Knight's armor. "I'd heard that you were back, young Phantom." A matching sneer could be seen beneath his helmet. "Welcome back."

It was the only warning that Danny had before the Fright Knight drew his sword and swept it towards him in a downward arc aimed at his head. It might have been the only warning, but it was warning enough, and Danny shoved Sam to one side as he took off through the air straight at the Fright Knight, both hands beginning to blur green as he reached out to tackle the older ghost away from the building. There was a clang as armor knocked together beneath the force of Danny's momentum and a momentary whooshing as they flew backwards, and then there was a soft cry as the Fright Knight brought one knee up to slam into Danny's chest.

He tumbled away and up into the air, one hand clutching the now forming bruise as he took a deep breath, careful not to let it out to forcefully. Already his Wail was too close to the surface, and Danny was afraid of the damage he could cause if he slipped and used it without meaning to. So instead he slammed both hands together into a double fisted ectoblast and plowed the Fright Knight into the ground as he glanced around wondering where the almost familiar Nightmare should have been flying. There wasn't anything in the air but Danny, and he didn't waste another moment worrying about the horse as the Fright Knight barreled up from the ground toward him.

Danny twisted away from him, smirking again as he reached out and grabbed at the trailing cape. It was fisted in his hands before his opponent knew what was happening, and Danny yanked on it hard. He actually laughed as the tug pulled the Fright Knight back toward him fast enough that the innate fire inside the Spirit of Halloween left a flaming visage in the air above them. Once around, twice, and a third time and Danny let go to watch the ghost flying through the air, uncontrolled, up and over the two story apartments.

With an amused smile Danny dropped back down to the air, ready to shift back to human as he looked for Sam. He found her for a moment, eyes wide as she watched him, and then lost her again as he spun away from the hoof beats that pounded up from behind him. Nightmare galloped past, mane and tail like emerald flags streaming behind him against the dark of the night, horn lowered and ready to gouge him if he gave the creature a chance. He snapped off a sturdy blast of energy after it, hitting Nightmare firmly and making the horse squeal in pain and rage as he took to the skies and was lost to sight.

The squeal was lost as Danny turned at Sam's startled cry. Where once she was safe, hidden in the stoop of her door, now she was held by the Fright Knight, high enough that if she were to fall she'd be hurt. His eyes narrowed and Danny growled. "Let her go," he ordered, his voice bordering the demonic tone he'd used in another life. "This is between you and me; let her go."

The Fright Knight only laughed, and Danny took the chance he was given as the older ghost's eyes closed with the fully bellied mocking. Within seconds Sam was in his arms, holding tightly to his neck as he sped her back to the dubious safety of the ground. Her stomach was sick with unexpected fear as Danny dropped her down, and Sam crouched low to the ground trying to get the sudden and very human reaction to near death back under her control as she undid the straps of the heels she wore. She left them, and her purse on the grass as she raced barefoot for her door, ever thankful that she had a ground level apartment.

Her key was still clutched in her hand, tightly enough that an imprint was left in her flesh as she shoved it into the lock and twisted it open. The door swung in and Sam darted blindly through the dark. She had no need of light; too many times had she done this very thing when she needed a new thermos without time for the niceties of civilization. The cabinet was across the room, to the right, and her hand was on it, yanking it open and a thermos fair jumping into her hands even as she turned to race back outside.

They were on the ground again, Danny and the Fright Knight, a ghost that Sam had seen only rarely since Danny's disappearance. Nightmare was there again too, pawing the earth with one foreleg from behind the Knight as he shifted his weight from one leg to another. A close look showed unexpected burns along his hind legs and quarters, and Sam had to wonder at the casual power of Danny's ectoblast that had done that to the spectral horse. It wasn't a usual thing to actually wound any of the ghosts, and the sudden realization that Danny's powers had grown that much left Sam feeling colder inside than the empty rage that had filled her only minutes ago.

She could hear them arguing, Danny insisting on the Fright Knight leaving, and the Fright Knight insisting that he would only leave when Danny was well and truly dead. If the situation hadn't been so serious she might have laughed at the battle of testosterone. Instead, she uncapped the thermos and aimed it at Nightmare, sucking the horse into it with a shrill scream that made both Danny and the Fright Knight stare in surprise, neither of them having expected her to take part in the fight. She sent a pointed look Danny's way even as she prepared to run; the Fright Knight's face was warped in a twisted rage as he took a step toward her.

"Oh," she breathed as she realized that he was actually aiming for her as he unsheathed the Soul Shredder again, but even as he came within striking distance and the sword was stabbed out a dark blur came between it and her.

When she opened her eyes she could see the sword, blade barely painted green with Danny's blood where it emerged from his side to come to a stop before it touched her. His breathing was ragged, harsh and pained and she could see sweat where it formed at his temples and the way his eyes were tight with the pain. "Danny," she said as she reached out to him, and stopped at the sharp shake of his head even as his eyes rose to meet the Fright Knight's.

"Why are you still here?" came the booming question, anger knotting the words. "Why haven't you been taken?"

Danny gave the Fright Knight a grimace of a smile as his white-gloved hands tightened on the hilt of the sword. "I've already lived through my worst fear. You can't do any worse than that," he grated as he pulled the sword from his side and swung it up and down shattering the blade over his knee.

He moved towards the Fright Knight, but Sam never saw what he would have done as she uncapped the thermos again to suck the other ghost into it with his horse, narrowly missing Danny but never worried that she would hit him on accident, or even on purpose. She swallowed, her knees shaking as she capped the thermos again and took a few wavering steps to where her shoes and purse were abandoned on the grass. She stooped, scooped them up and found her way to her apartment, closing the door behind her and locking it from numb habit. She sank down to the couch, dropped her things from her hands and buried her face in them. That was how Danny found her.

---

If he could have avoided fighting in front of her, Danny would have been a lot happier. But he hadn't had the choice of time and place when the Fright Knight showed up. As it was, Danny wasn't even sure that it hadn't been planned from the beginning; the Fright Knight had long been a lackey of Vlad's. That wasn't something that was bound to change, no matter how long he'd been gone. And Sam had been brilliant, even if she'd been caught off guard at first. He could name dozens of people, maybe even more, who would have completely frozen at being captured by one of the most powerful known ghosts in existence.

Not his Sam. She'd run, sure, but straight for a thermos. And then she'd come and given him back up and kept him from having to actually do any lasting damage bar breaking the Soul Shredder. The sword, he knew, would fix itself in time. It would take a Halloween or two and the energies that it derived from the holiday and the fear inspiring tricks and treats. But it wasn't permanent; the sword couldn't be truly rid of unless fear somehow disappeared from the world. It had been one of Danny's many lessons about his ghostly opponents, one of the easiest to remember, too.

He contemplated letting his ghost half go right there in the open, but he knew the risks were too great. Even if no one was in sight, there were dozens of apartments who had windows facing the patch of lawn where he stood. He'd find himself in trouble no matter what he did if he changed back to human. Either someone would see him and his secret wouldn't be a secret anymore, or someone would see him and the blood and correctly assume he was injured. Instead he let himself drift slowly towards Sam's apartment and through the wall until he touched down next to the couch where she sat, her face a study in thought.

He couldn't read minds, but he'd had time and motivation to study body language, and with a person he knew—had once known—as well as Sam Manson, Danny could all but hear the wheels turning in her head and the things that she must be thinking. The truly sad thing was that he was close, so very close to knowing what was in her mind. But in the end what he guessed at wasn't it.

Danny would think that Sam was afraid of him, which was true, but where Sam sat on her couch, hands wrapped around her stomach as she stared blindly at the coffee table, all she could think was that this Danny Fenton was not the boy she had known. He had his eyes, and his hair, and she thought that somewhere in there was the same sense of humor. But this Danny Fenton was infinitely more dangerous, to have taken the Fright Knight the way he had. And it did frighten her, more than she wanted to admit. But beneath that was the strongest desire to know him again.

It was enough to make her head spin and Sam shook her head to try and rid herself of the confusion her thoughts left her in. She knew that he was there, that he was standing not even five feet from her as she tried to focus again, knew that he was changing back to human. She knew that the blood that had painted his black hazmat bright green had darkened to a thick red, and still she couldn't understand why he should be so… So.

She blinked and looked up at him where he was shrugging his shirt off to press it to the sword wound at his side. It was smaller now than it had been when he was a ghost, she mused as she let her anger begin to kindle again. Three years ago that wouldn't have been the case, and three years ago Danny would have succumbed to the power of the Soul Shredder. Three years ago Danny wouldn't have even last a few minutes along with the Fright Knight, much less wipe the floor with him. Three years ago Danny would have been asking for help instead of blindly protecting her to the exclusion of all else.

That thought was enough to make the anger burst into full fledged flame, and she stood, inches shorter than him in her bare feet as she stalked to him where he was still blotting his wound. "I'm not letting you off the hook that easy," she muttered as she yanked the shirt from his hands and folded it into a small and thick pad to press to the sluggishly bleeding wound. "Keep pressure on it, alright?"

"I know," was all he said, soft and without any emotion as he held the shirt tightly and watched her leave and return, a small box in her hand that she tugged gauze and tape from.

She was quiet as her hands moved through the well practiced motions of patching him up. For a moment Danny could believe that he'd never left Amity, that he'd never lost all of those years with her and maybe his chance forever. He tried to, tried to pretend that her silence wasn't from anger and disgust with him, that it was only because she was worried. Tried to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary had happened, that everything was fine, that everything was perfect.

Her voice broke that pale belief.

"If you were so selfish to leave, why did you have to come back and ruin the fragile peace we found?" she asked softly, her voice intense.

"Selfish?" he choked out as she settled the last piece of tape at his waist and tossed the roll back into the box before turning away from him.

"Selfish," she repeated. "You left for what? To get married? Was that why?"

The offhanded accusation tore through his carefully pieced together resolve. "What?" he exclaimed. "You think I _wanted_ to go? I didn't want to leave, I _never_ wanted to leave. I only went because," and his voice cracked as he said it," Because _he _said it was the only way."

Her eyes went wide at that, and for a brief moment a million different ideas flitted through her mind. She wasn't foolish or flighty, but Sam had never lacked for imagination. _He_ could be anyone. A ghost, a kidnapper, a friend… a lover. She bit her lip at that thought. It certainly would explain a great deal of the mystery, why Danny had disappeared without explanation, why he refused to answer questions about his marriage.

"Danny? Who is he?" The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them, and Sam struggled to control the way she watched him so that she wouldn't make him more nervous than he seemed to be since the night he'd shown up on the Fenton's doorstep.

"I don't even want to know what you're thinking, do I?" he asked quietly, his voice soft in defeat. "Clockwork, Sam. I left because Clockwork told me to."

"Oh," she breathed as she realized the implication. Clockwork—she'd only met him once, and she could still remember the fear she felt knowing that she was, and everyone she knew, at the mercy of this ghost. She knew Danny had worked with him once or twice since then, but she also knew that every single time someone, Danny or his family or his friends, was in mortal danger. In that aspect, Sam could understand that if Clockwork was involved then whatever made Danny run, leave everyone he knew and loved, was serious.

Or it could simply mean…

"So… you're not _my_ Danny, are you?" she asked very softly.

He gave a pained laugh as her eyes rose to meet his. "I am. I'm just… not," he answered softly, much softer than when she asked, and it sounded like the words tore at him to speak them aloud. And so tired, so very tired sounding as he whispered, "I've been gone a long time, Sam."

Her eyes went wide and she took a step back as she looked at him. So cryptic, but knowing that Clockwork was involved was enough to make Sam rethink everything she knew, everything she thought she knew. He'd been gone three years, she'd known him so well in the three years before that when she hunted ghosts with him and Tucker. Well enough that she should have known something wasn't right from the very beginning, the first moment she'd seen him. If she'd just thought about it, maybe she'd have known.

But there was no way _to_ know. She only had Tucker as a comparison and Danny wasn't Tucker. But even so, Tucker was twenty, the age Danny should have been. And Tucker… Her mind flitted back six and a half years, forward by four as she thought about the ghost he'd become once, and defeated twice. Once in the future, once in the past to destroy it all. So different from both, and yet…

She almost didn't believe it, but she asked anyway. "How old are you, Danny?"

He swallowed and looked away, looked down. "Twenty-eight."


	8. Chapter 7

There and Back Again

7

He used hard work to try and mask the worry and annoyance that he wore like a cloak now. He'd never meant to tell anyone, much less Sam, and it was such a major deviance from the plan he'd made. But then, he'd been changing the plan ever since he'd come home to Amity and seen her that first night. But, and Danny had to admit it, Sam did have a way of changing everything when it came to him. He'd known it when he left eleven years ago; he'd known it when he'd returned a week ago. He knew it now, two days after he'd confessed the truth of his three year absence to her.

She'd been upset, afraid. She'd tried to hide it from him that night, but there was no way he could miss the sudden fear in her eyes as she realized what he was saying and took a good, long hard look at him to find the truth of it. Eleven years he'd been gone, to come back and spring that on her, no matter that she annoyed and aggravated and picked and harassed him with her accusations until he would have told her anything, especially the truth, just to make her stop.

He hadn't seen her in those two days, he hadn't called her or stopped by her apartment. He hadn't even seen her out patrolling, though Tucker said that she did the night after dinner. At least he'd talked to Tucker and Jazz both. They were making the effort, not pretending that things could be the way they were, but they were trying and Danny was willing to bend over backwards just to have his sister and friend back. In fact, they were both supposed to come by and help him paint tonight, the dining room and the guest bathroom.

They were really the only two rooms in his whole house that weren't finished now; he'd spent enough time making sure that everything else was the way he wanted it. Mostly. He couldn't magically add a person to it, no matter how much he wanted to, and Danny's thumb again brushed the bare space of his ring finger before closing his eyes and reminding himself that some things weren't meant to be. He gritted his teeth and took a deep breath before heading back outside to see what was left to be moved in.

"That, in the master bedroom," he said as he pointed a finger at the box spring and mattress that would top the bed frame he'd just put together with the help of one of the movers. He frowned at the other bed, smaller than the king he'd bought for himself but still a full sized bed. He hadn't bought a second frame, instead had a bedstead that was already put together and waiting to be moved in. he just hadn't decided what room it would belong to.

In the end he directed them to take it to the larger of the other two bedrooms, this one painted a gentle sea foam green that, even as he picked at the dried patches, decorated his jeans and shirt and completely covered one of the work boots he wore. "Underneath the window with it," he added as he turned to the couch and lifted one end and walked it to the living room. The brown faux leather fit well with the colors, as well as the matching chair they'd already moved in.

He considered it a good day's work that the movers were nearly ready to leave less than two hours after arriving. The last few bits were moved in and Danny tipped them well for their hard and careful work. Not a single door frame or wall had been nicked and floors were as perfect as they had been when he woke that morning. Now all that was left was a bit of tinkering and a shower.

"A very long, very hot shower," he muttered as he scraped at the paint embedded under his nails, then gave up and tugged his shirt off as he headed for the master bath. Before Danny made it even a step his ghost sense went off and a chill ran up his spine and out of his mouth. "Oh, the timing," he muttered and groaned as he shifted to ghost with a roll of his neck.

Another second passed before Danny shot up through the roof—making a mental note as he passed through the crawl space of the attic to lay boards and make it sound enough for true storage—and headed instinctively towards the disturbance. The trick of it, Clockwork had taught him, was not concentrating on it and letting his own ectoplasm do the seeking out of the opponent. He'd tried to explain that it was a natural ability of ectoplasm to sense, define, identify; the lesson had been wasted the entire first year he'd been away. Of course, that entire first year had been a waste in more ways than that, considering that Danny had spent it with Clockwork and no one else barring the ghosts he would find himself fighting.

Training, Clockwork had said, and proceeded to teach him with merciless efficiency until he'd told Danny one morning that it was time for him to rejoin the world of the living, and to face his friends and family in that lifetime. It had made Danny better, stronger, he'd learned how to control himself and his power ruthlessly. He'd learned things that he would never have known otherwise, trained long and hard to realize every facet of his potential. It had consumed his days from the time he woke till the time he went to sleep and even then, in his dreams, Danny would find himself still training, endlessly on and on.

And at that it had been the easiest thing about living then.

Danny pushed the thoughts out of his head, knowing exactly where they were headed and knowing that the rest of it was better left unsaid, unthought and forgotten. For now, at least; he knew eventually he'd have to confront it, admit it. Find a way to live with it. But not here, not now, not yet—for now he could concentrate on Technus and the electronic havoc he was wreaking on the local electronics store. That and remember that Valerie was there and to keep a careful watch for her. All he needed was for her to take it into mind to start after him. She hadn't tried yet, but he'd only been home for a week. There was still time for her to start.

Whatever had happened with Technus while Danny had been gone, it wasn't anything like what he'd confronted in that other time, because this Technus had already managed to form himself a fairly dangerous exoskeleton of anything and everything that he'd found. Danny could almost have prayed that it had been a Best Buy instead of the local store—there might have been a lot more to choose from in the form of big screen televisions, but at least Best Buy didn't carry power tools that included chainsaws.

His assumption about Valerie was right, she was already there on her jet sled and taking shots at any and everything that looked vulnerable on Technus' walking deathtrap. The damage wasn't as much as Danny could have hoped for, and he found himself more relieved than less that it was Skulker he'd run into his first night in Amity. The Technus he was used to was still a nasal sounding, mullet wearing, plan spouting semi-moron. This Technus seemed to have lost his sense of the absurd and gone straight in for mayhem.

_Maybe,_ Danny though wryly, _he's been taking lessons from Vlad._ As absurd as it sounded it still drew a laugh out of him as he followed Valerie down into a stoop as she aimed for a shouler joint and fired, Danny's ectoblast seconds behind the energy she'd sent. It impacted in a bright mix of pink and green and Danny pulled up short with a surprised shout as Valerie yanked her sled around in a tight unanticipated turn.

"What the hell, Val?" he shouted at her a moment later as he dodged a blast she sent his way. He thought he saw a smirk behind the semi-clear mask she wore, but wasn't sure as he ducked out of the way.

She fired another shot at him and Danny swerved again before sending a pummeling barrage of energy at Technus. It was easy now, after so many years of practice, to do everything at once. To pay attention to the bystanders, calculate his ectoblasts and the trajectory that falling pieces would most likely go, to keep track of any and all of Technus' arms. The only thing he wasn't sure about was keeping track of Valerie, though he never let her get closer than a hundred feet while he evaded her and tried taking Technus down.

Where he'd come from, there had been an uneasy alliance. It had taken him years, and he'd never trusted her enough to tell her the truth of who he was. But the Valerie he was used to no longer blindly attacked him unless it was an actual sparring match, something that both had enjoyed though Danny had always held back even in those. Maybe one day he'd be able to do it differently here, in this life, but from the way she was giving chase Danny knew that the odds of it were slim to none.

He thought he might have gotten the whole of the situation under control, three of Technus' four arms were gone or immobile, and the ghost looked like he was beginning to run out of steam since Danny had kept him away from anything that might give him a quick recharge. Much as Danny hated to admit it, he had blown a transformer three blocks into the chase—better that than trying o fight this Technus for hours more.

But the fight, on Danny's part, was brought to a screeching halt when he tried ducking, letting his flight go completely so that he could plummet out of the way of the remaining arm, and dropped straight into one of Valerie's shots. It hurt, more than he wanted to even think about as a surprised scream was driven from his lungs, and Danny was only grateful that it hadn't been anything but a regular scream. He could still remember the scream that had been brought from him all those years ago on the day that he had disappeared from Amity Park. He didn't ever want to live through anything like that again.

His fall was stopped, not by the ground, but by instinct kicking in a rocketing him back up into the air where he floated, eyes glazed as he pressed a hand to the burned skin at his side. It wasn't as bad as some of his injuries in the past had been, but for it to be almost perfectly positioned to catch the entry and exit wounds from the Soul Shredder—oh, it hurt.

Danny clenched his jaw, ground his teeth together until he was sure that they would break as he counted to ten, and ten again, and again and again, all the while watching as Valerie searched for him. The blast had apparently drained some of her systems and she wasn't able to lock onto him through Technus' electromagnetic powers. Danny took a deep breath, knowing that he had to stop the fight soon before it was too late, either because Technus recharged and outpaced his pursuers, or Valerie managed to get a good shot off and kill Danny.

He closed his eyes and let the ectoenergy that lived beneath the surface of his skin flare forth, rippling like green fire as it danced across skin and hazmat. To anyone else, he knew that it would look like he was on fire. To Danny, it wasn't even close to that. Cold, almost freezing instead of burning hot. Clockwork and Danny had always assumed it was because of his ice powers integrating themselves into the searing strength of his ectoblasts. Danny didn't care. He only knew that this fire was freezing, and would eat at the metal Technus had taken over like a parasite until it was weak and damaged and easily destroyed.

Without a second though Danny drooped down, hands fisted as he took aim and arrowed into the heart of Technus' armor. The metal where he pierced was sharp and ragged and grabbed for him as Danny plunged through it. He could feel a few places where it actually caught and snagged through cloth and flesh, the blood was boiling against his icy skin beneath the cold fire, but Danny ignored it knowing that tiny wounds like that would heal overnight. They weren't even an annoyance anymore as he drove out the other side, pulling up inches from the ground to skim along the side of the behemoth.

He let loose with more of the alloyed ecto-power as he flew back up, watching in satisfaction as the flames took over, spreading like wildfire across the surface and from within. There was a cry from within it, then a scream as Technus bolted out from inside. It was the first time Danny had laid eyes on this world's version of Technus now, after time. Much to Danny's surprise this Technus wasn't all that different than the one he had dealt with elsewhen, or even back during high school and into his freshman year.

He thought it even as he flew straight for him, hooking an arm around Technus' waist and sending him flying back with Danny as he reached behind him to yank the thermos from his waist and thumb the cap off. The chain snapped over his knuckles and the lid hit his wrist as he pulled it around and aimed it at Technus a split second after letting the other ghost go. He went in with a shriek, and that was familiar enough that Danny cracked a grin before turning and raising a shield around himself to block whatever the tiny contraptions Valerie threw at him were.

Bombs, some type of very powerful bomb, he learned as it drove him, shield and all back in the air. But the shield didn't break, it didn't even waver, and Danny dropped it a moment later before throwing another one up, this time around Valerie. That had been hard to learn, but a pleasant side effect to the magnitude of his strength.

"I knew it!" Valerie shouted at him as she shot at the shield and then screamed when her gunfire ricocheted back on her to sear her battle suit. She glared fiercely at him as she held a hand to the singed arm. "What are you going to do with me, Ghost?"

"With you, Val?" he asked in surprise. "Not a damn thing. But I am going to stop the fire before it eats half of Amity Park," and he pointed at the flaming debris where it was falling and starting to spread across the asphalt.

With a breath of concentrated effort Danny raised another shield around everything that was on fire. It wouldn't have taken so much, but Danny was too wary to let Valerie out of her cage just yet. Hell, he wasn't planning on letting her out until he was well on his way and already human again. He had a healthy love of his own skin and didn't trust Valerie with it for a moment. With a frown Danny drew the shield in, making it smaller so that the space between it and the fire was nearly nonexistent, even as he lowered the temperature of it and the air within to nearly freezing.

The cold called to the fires, and he watched, patient until every last little flame had settled itself to dancing its way across his shield before he lifted it, called it up and into him. The fire burned with the cold as it sank into him, but even as he called it back Danny could feel the heat of his ectoenergy rising up to counter and control the cold until all was locked safely back where it belonged and full under his control again. He let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding, and Danny opened his eyes to look at the ground. All was safe, all was well, and Technus wasn't even twitching in the thermos.

With a smile that was more just a baring of teeth Danny waved at Valerie. "See you next time, and try to remember that I'm on _your_ side for a chance?"

He didn't stick around to see what Valerie's sharp tongued retort was—and he was sure that there was one. He only flew far enough to be able to evade her if she did give chase before letting the shields holding her go. His energy was flagging and he knew that if he didn't let Val out then he'd find himself falling out of the sky in human form. Of the two, he'd rather risk being stuck somewhere in Amity Park without his shirt and covered in paint. But she didn't give chase, whether by design or choice he couldn't say, but Danny wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth. He took the chance to head straight for home and, with a sigh, dropped through the ceiling to land as Fenton.

He sighed and stretched, grimacing at the pulling of the skin in his side that was now burnt scar tissue. And then he was jumping back up into the air and swerving around, one hand glowing bright green even in human form as he faced the source of the startled gasp that had just been behind him. With a bemused frown he lowered it, and himself as quickly as he'd jumped back into the air when he saw familiar amethyst eyes, wide and worried.

"Oh, my god, Danny," she said softly, eyes glued to what was left of his right side.

He glanced down at it, wincing as he got a good look at it but relieved that it wasn't bleeding again. It would have sucked to deal with the burn on top of bleeding; that had been annoying enough after the Soul Shredder had skewered him. "Sam," he said, rubbing the back of his neck and grimacing again as he pulled the burns again. "What're you doing here?"

She narrowed her eyes at him in annoyance, and then rolled them. "Danny, if the bleeding was that bad you could have gotten stitches. Did you really need to roast yourself like that?"

"It wasn't me," he said indignantly as she became a flurry of motion. "It was Valerie. And no, I didn't start it."

He supposed, as he watched Sam head into the kitchen, unerring for the drawer that he'd started filling with hand towels, that it was some sort of estrogen driven form of ESP that led her there. Not that he'd ever say that in her hearing, even if he did think it—she'd kill him. Then she'd resuscitate him and kill him again. He almost smiled at the exasperated glare she sent over her shoulder at him as she plucked one of said towels from the drawer and ran it beneath some cool water. She rung the water out of it with careless ease before pressing it to his side.

He hissed at the pressure even as the coolness number some of the pain away. He was surprised that she'd only needed to turn to reach him, he hadn't realized he was fallowing her from the living room into the kitchen. Habit, he wanted to say, but knew it was more a hopeless and desperate wanting that made him trail after her like a satellite around a planet. The thought made him smile faintly as he recalled Sam, sometime in the months before he'd left, comparing Star to one such thing with Paulina as the planet she orbited. Her commentary had been pithy, she'd compared Paulina to a gas giant shortly afterward.

Sam looked up at him questioningly as she adjusted the towel a little, frowning to see some pieces of skin sluicing off with some of the water she hadn't lost in the wringing. It looked painful, but there Danny was just watching her with the strangest look in his eyes. _Far away,_ she thought. _Like he's somewhere else. _The curiosity drove her to ask him. Sam had never been able to resist a puzzle, even if she didn't have the most patience in the world.

"Danny?" she asked him softly. "What're you thinking right now?"

He smiled at her, but it wasn't happy. "Just remembering high school is all." She wasn't sure if she believed him or not, but she lost her chance to interrogate him as he asked her, "Why're you here, Sam?"

"Oh," she said, looking back down at his side. Anywhere but his eyes, because she knew that he'd be less than pleased with her demand. But she wouldn't sugar coat it. She was a woman who'd always said what she thought without prettying it up. "I think you should tell Tucker and Jazz."

She tensed even as he did, but the unexpected way he just relaxed as she flipped the towel over to a cooler section made her glance up in concern. She was expecting a fight, he didn't have the energy for flight, but she wasn't getting it. Or really any response. So she poked at him.

"I think it would really help things if you told them," she explained quietly. "It would help them understand it, accept it. Maybe it would keep them from asking questions."

He turned a wry grin on her and she could feel her cheeks heating in a flush. "Like you, Sam? Are you so understanding and accepting?"

She fought the desire to look away from the burning blue of his eyes, and nodded. "I don't have to like it, but I can accept it. I still want to talk to Clockwork myself, though," she added in an insistent tone.

He shrugged. "Alright."

Her jaw dropped and so did the wet towel into a pile on the floor. "Alright?" she asked him, sure she'd misheard him. "What do you mean, 'alright'?"

He shrugged as he retrieved the towel and headed into the hall, smiling where she couldn't see it. "Exactly what I said. Alright. Have it your way. I'll tell them, you can talk to Clockwork. They'll both be here in about an hour. Why don't you see what we can order for dinner?"

There was dead silence as he put on some speed, hoping to make it to the dubious safety of his bedroom before she realized what he'd just said to her. He was almost there when her shrill cry followed him up the hall.

"Daniel Fenton, I am _not_ your maid!"


	9. Chapter 8

There and Back Again

8

The quick acquiescence wasn't what Danny had thought he'd do when he first heard her subtly disguised demand. But something in him had crumbled beneath Sam's requests, and Danny hadn't even tried to fight it. The plan that he'd spent so long trying to come up with had already cracked, and now it was well and truly destroyed as he sat on the couch next to Sam, carefully watching Tucker in the chair with one eye, and Jazz with the other as she paced the length of the living room. When all was said and done, they were taking it fairly well.

Danny had taken Sam's assistance as he wined and dined his sister and best friend, and then, when they were at their most relaxed, he'd sprung it on them. "You know, it was three years for you, but it was eleven for me."

That had been nearly five minutes ago and neither had yet to say anything more coherent than sputtering in disbelief and then in dull realization as they did the same as Sam and looked at him. _Really_ looked. Danny knew that it had been his greatest advantage to the whole plan, the fact that people generally saw what they wanted to see. And his friends, his family, had all wanted to see a Danny who wasn't already grown, was still boy enough to be their son, brother, friend. Not a Danny who, because of one massive paradox, was nearly a decade older than them. A Danny who at turns intrigued and frightened and completely bewildered them.

They wanted a Danny that they still knew, a Danny that Danny wasn't anymore. It tore at his heart, knowing that he couldn't be what they wanted, needed. But he also knew that this was the only way to save their lives, to keep them safe. There had been too many chances in any of the other steps he'd taken to keep the people he loved safe and sound. This, the most sure way, the most difficult way… He knew it was the right way.

_The right way is often the most difficult way, Danny._

Even now he could hear the echoing of Clockwork's words in his memory. He'd asked so many times during that first year, so damned many times, why. And Clockwork's answer had always been the same. Like him, Danny knew that Jazz and Tucker both would need to hear it from Clockwork themselves. It wasn't something he would begrudge them. Besides, it wouldn't be that hard or even out of his way since he'd already planned on taking a trip to see his mentor, anyway.

Even if he presented a fairly good face to them… There was still too much for him to bear alone, and none of them could share it with him. It would be unfair to ask them to.

"Dude," Tucker finally said as he rubbed his stomach absently. "If what you're saying is true… Why didn't you just tell us?"

Danny arched an eyebrow at Tucker. "If I told you I'd lived in Amity Park for eleven years while I was gone, would you have believed me?"

Tucker chewed his lip thoughtfully. "Well, I would have once you mentioned Clockwork. He's helped you out before, and I've seen how he can stop time anyway." Tucker shrugged. "I wouldn't say that this wasn't his doing."

"Jazz?" Danny asked softly, turning to his sister. Her brow was furrowed and he was sure that he could see tears in her eyes when she looked at him.

"How, Danny?" she asked him, and he shrugged blindly.

"Paradox isn't my forte, Jazz," he offered. "I can't explain it."

"No! How did I miss it? How did I not know? I mean, you're so different, and you don't _look_ like you should." She pressed her fingers to her eyes for a bare moment before looking at Danny again. "I want to talk to this ghost, this—what did you say his name was? Time Clock?"

Sam and tucker both laughed as Danny tried to smother his own. "Clockwork, Jazz. His name is Clockwork."

"We'll have to wait until your parents go to sleep," Sam said as she sat up, a smile still on her face making Danny feel rather like smiling himself. She reached out and closed one of the pizza boxes before sitting it atop another one that had already been emptied. "It shouldn't be too long."

"About that," Danny began as he reached into his pocket and pulled out what was his most precious possession, right next to his Fenton thermos. He held up the gear strung on ribbon and flicked a thumb at it to make it spin. "We don't have to wait at all."

"Wow," Sam offered as she reached a hand out to touch it. She stopped just short, glancing at him for permission, and then running a finger along it when Danny nodded. "You have a Time Medallion."

He smiled as Tucker leaned over to look at it closer, too. "It's already off of you," Tucker said as he remembered how the medallions had worked six years earlier for them. "How do we make it work if you weren't wearing it?"

Danny gave Tucker a smile as he turned to Jazz and beckoned her over with a wave of his hand. The moment she reached out and put her hand in his, Danny glanced back to make sure that Sam and Tucker were both still touching the medallion. They were, and he breathed. There was a mental twist, a blinding flash of green and black and green again, and the other three were gasping as they found themselves roughly deposited on the floor of Clockwork's tower. Danny was still on his feet, but he didn't gloat like he might have if he'd been younger. He'd had far too much practice to feel any superiority at staying afoot.

"I don't have to wear it," he explained as he glanced around, extending searching tendrils of ectoenergy to see if he could find Clockwork. It had never worked so far, but he always tried. "It's tuned to me, I only have to tell it where I want to go, either here or one of the designated places in the real world."

Danny tucked the medallion back into his pocket before pulling his ectoenergy back in. "Come on," he said with a faint smile. "You can have your go at Clockwork, I promise. I just need to talk to him first."

The followed him quietly as Danny roamed the halls of the time castle as if he belonged there. it was clear to them that he did, because Danny was following a path unerringly, turning down halls that seemed to go on forever only to double back in a different corridor that shouldn't have existed, couldn't have, without meeting somewhere they'd already been. But nothing ever seemed familiar but the drab blue-gray of the stone and the mechanical ticking and winding of gears as Danny led them deeper. It startled them and Jazz actually plowed into Tucker when he stopped short to avoid doing the same thing to Danny.

"Do you trust me?" Danny asked softly as he stared at the empty wall in front of them, and then looked back with fear in his eyes.

Sam's nod of assent was first and completely without hesitation, and Tucker's was only a few moments later as he followed Sam's lead. Jazz chewed on her lip for a moment as she met his eyes slowly. They were so familiar, but she could see things in them she didn't want to, was afraid to. But they were still his eyes, and Jazz finally nodded.

"I trust you, little brother."

He smiled at her then, brilliantly, and Jazz smiled back as he reached towards her and wrapped her hand in his even as he tucked Sam under his free arm and draped his arm, with Jazz's attached at the hand, over Tucker's shoulder. "Close your eyes, or you'll get sick."

Jazz obeyed without thinking about it and even as she did was relieved to realize that it was from trust and trust only, and not a response to the commanding tone of Danny's voice. She heard a pop and felt the distantly familiar pins and needles feeling of intangibility sweep across her. Then she felt herself being plunged into the coldest air she'd ever felt. She fought it, the sudden desire to open her eyes and see what, exactly, they were moving through, but then the icy sensation was gone and Jazz felt the solidness of the ground beneath her feet again.

Next to her, Tucker groaned. "God, Danny. What was that?"

Danny laughed and Jazz wiggled her fingers as he let go of them. "That was one of the time streams. I told you to close your eyes."

Tucker groaned again and Sam laughed before looking to Danny. Danny only sighed and looked around again. Clockwork had set things up for him, the old Time Master's lair was more inviting than it usually was. Whatever Clockwork had done to the clocks dimmed the echoing ticking that Danny had grown used to, and he'd offered more in the way of seating. Danny smiled a little at that. Usually there were two chairs, one for each of them. Now there were five, and a small couch as well. And, and Danny raised an eyebrow at this, various beverages and snacks laid out on the small table Clockwork kept next to his own chair.

"Sweet, there're snacks," Tucker said, nausea momentarily forgotten as he made a beeline for the table and plopped into the chair next to it as he started picking through the chips.

"Tuck? Don't sit there," Danny said as he let his ectopower bleed out a little so he could tell where he needed to go to find Clockwork.

"Why not?" Tucker asked, mouth already crammed full.

Danny shrugged as he found the Time Master and breathed a little more deeply at the thought of being able to talk without fear, if only for a few moments. "It's Clockwork's chair. I'll be back in a few, alright?" he said and headed towards one of the three small halls that led from the large room that served as Clockwork's main lair.

He didn't even wait for a response, only went, and when he came to the small room at the end and the ghost that was his mentor, he let the walls he'd been clinging to since his return come down. His breath rasped out of him and Danny swallowed thickly.

"This is hard, Clockwork," he said into the stillness as he met the other ghost's endless red eyes. "I wonder, now, if I can still do it."

---

It was Jazz who caught the echoes of the conversation as the sounds made their way back to her and Danny's friends. With an annoyed glance at Tucker and fierce shush at his yelp when she smacked him to quiet him, Jazz rose from the seat she's taken next to Sam on the couch. Sam followed, but Jazz didn't look back as she tried to catch the whispers of conversation, knowing that one voice that was painfully familiar was her brother's. The other she could only assume to be the ghost Danny called Clockwork. It was deep, almost reassuring as she heard it rumble in response to a half heard comment, and Jazz bit her lip as another snippet made its way back to her.

"…it hurts so much…" Jazz bit her lip at the broken tone to his voice as she looked back at Sam. The younger girl's eyes met hers and Jazz could see tears in them. "…watched all of them…still feels like it just happened…

Jazz leaned forward a little trying to make sense of what her brother was saying. As she took a step into the hallway Jazz pushed the feeling of trespassing down. She could feel Sam right behind her and steeled herself to take several more silent steps towards the silence that had just dawned. There was a heavier tread behind them, and Jazz whipped her head around to find a suddenly silent and unusually serious Tucker following, though Sam hadn't even flinched. She could remember a time when she'd been jealous of them, Tucker and Sam and Danny, for their unusually close friendship. It had almost given credit to the people who'd once said that Danny and Sam shared a psychic connection, though Jazz knew that that wasn't true.

But she'd never envied Tucker his role as Sam's support when it was clear Danny wasn't coming back, that he was dead—when they thought it was clear. Now she could only reassure herself that some things didn't change, even if others did.

"Clockwork, I miss her."

This time the words were louder, and so much more painful. Jazz reached back blindly to take one of Sam's hands, nearly breaking into tears at the desperate way Sam clung to it as they drew closer. It wasn't difficult to see how hard the words struck the younger girl, and Jazz's heart ached for her. It was no secret that Sam had been more than half in love with Danny when they were children, and even more common knowledge that the love had blossomed the older they grew. Jazz had always been so sure that it had been on both sides, but hearing that… It made her wonder. And if it made her wonder then it was cutting Sam straight to her heart.

Jazz bit her lip and started to turn back, afraid of what else they might hear, but Danny's next words stopped her in her tracks.

"I don't know how to do this anymore," he said and none of the three missed the weariness in his voice. "Every time I see them it's like… like I'm dying inside. How do I tell them that I watched them all die less than a month ago?"

This time there was no hiding their reactions as all three gasped at Danny's question. There was a sudden silence as Jazz slapped her hand over her mouth, Tucker and Sam both huddled against the wall with worried frowns, and then Danny was standing at the end of the hall. His eyes were tired, more tired than they'd been before he'd left them in the middle of Clockwork's lair. It seemed that dark circles had built themselves beneath his weary blue eyes in the minutes since then, and Jazz's heart ached at the sight. His shoulders were slumped and even his gate was—she couldn't find any other word for it—defeated.

"You'll have heard, then," he said, making it a statement instead of a question.

There were three silent nods and another ghost floated out to stop next to Danny. Jazz had a moment to be surprised that the ghost Danny spoke so respectfully of was a mere infant when his form blurred. As it cleared Jazz's eyes widened to see that in the space of a few heartbeats and full grown ghost floated next to her brother. She swallowed, and couldn't stop herself from gaping as it happened again, this time to leave a wizened old man behind. And again, back to an infant. He agile mind quickly latched on to the implications of it, and knowing that he held sway over time, and in less than a minute Jazz forgot that she'd ever been uncomfortable.

Tucker and Sam weren't bothered by Clockwork, they remembered him better than they'd expected. Even if at the time he'd been trying to kill Danny, even if it was only for appearances. It was hard to forget that trip to the Ghost Zone, to forget the awful mix of Phantom and Plasmius who was, last he knew, still trapped somewhere in a thermos in this very castle. Even as the thought crossed Tucker's mind he couldn't help but wonder if the other one was still there, a twisted and grown version of Danny, and he asked.

"So does this make you older than the other one, or do we still get to call him your evil older self, or not? Because you're kind of older than him now."

The question was just off the wall enough that Danny's eyes lit a little in amusement, even if he still looked like he could sleep for a year. Danny shrugged as he started towards them, hands in pockets, Clockwork following behind. "I don't know, never really thought about it."

Clockwork cleared his throat and sent a dry but still disbelieving look Danny's way. "Alright," Danny admitted. "I spent hours tormenting the bastard. But I don't know how to answer the question anyway." He didn't say anything else as he walked past them and into the main room, lowering himself into a chair with a ragged breath. "How much?" he asked resolutely. "How much did you hear?"

Silence reigned as Sam stepped forward slowly, eyes downcast as she found her way to the chair farthest from Danny, something that neither Jazz nor Tucker missed, and both seemed to understand as Sam's way of trying to protect herself from getting too close, even if that might already have been too late. Together, almost as if they'd planned it, Jazz and Tucker made their way to the couch that sat the length between Sam and Danny and dropped onto it, only looking at Clockwork a little curiously as he took the single chair that remained, the very same one that Tucker had tried to take before until Danny's warning.

Jazz swallowed, wondering who would be first to speak, and then the silence was broken by Sam.

"We—" and Sam stopped for a moment, dark lavender eyes flickering to Danny before dropping back down again as she cleared her throat. "We heard you say something about us dying. All of us dying, less than a month ago. That… that was all we really heard."

She didn't say anything about hearing him talk about his dead wife, didn't even look up at Danny again to wonder if he knew she wasn't telling the whole truth. Sam didn't really care, it still hurt too much, almost too much to breathe as she realized that whatever chances she and Danny might once have had, it wasn't there anymore. It was clear as day where his heart lay; with whomever he'd loved enough to marry, loved enough to tell the most powerful ghost in existence that he missed her. It hurt to just think it and she was glad she wasn't alone. If she had been there would have been nothing to stop her from saying it, and Sam didn't know exactly what would happen if—when—she heard those words from her mouth.

That it was over, it was done. There would never be a Sam and Danny.

She swallowed and closed her eyes. It wasn't worth thinking about now. Maybe later, when she was at home and alone and safe in her solitude. But not now. now she needed to concentrate on other things, on Danny and Clockwork and whatever reason had taken him from Amity Park three and eleven years ago.

"What happened?" she heard Tucker ask, and then on the heels of that, "How?" by Jazz.

"About a month back, when I was, there was an accident," he started quietly, blue eyes dark and shadowed in the single moment he let them lift enough to look at them, and at her. "Mom and Dad were in the lab, working, and there was an explosion. The lab went, the house, the Op Center. There was no chance of survival. We assumed that it was just an accident—it wasn't."

She watched as he scrubbed a tired hand over his eyes once again before he continued.

"You were next, Jazz. And then Val. Both of you went in staged car accident. And then Tuck. It looked like suicide, but I didn't believe it. Neither did Sam. We knew you too well to believe you'd ever do that." He gave a hollow laugh. "Turned out that your vitamins had been spiked."

And now his eyes lifted again to stare straight at Sam. "Then you, Sam. Right in front of me. I knew it was all a set up then, but then it was too late, and it was all over. He'd taken everything, everyone I loved."

"Who?" She asked it before she realized what she was doing, and only because she could see something else swimming in those endless cerulean eyes of his. Something deeper than the pain, the hurt, the agony of losing them all.

Danny's lips twisted in a bitter smile. "Vlad," he said. "You were all murdered by Vlad."


	10. Chapter 9

There and Back Again

9

If Danny had expected an uproar over the news that he'd watched everyone important in his life murdered, then he was sadly mistaken in what would happen. He supposed, as he watched them carefully through hooded eyes, that he should be thankful that they were all taking it so well. It was a good omen (he told himself) for what would happen when he confessed the other half of that most painful knowledge. But that, if he could get away with it, didn't have to be confessed right now. Instead, right now, he could watch them and see if he needed to worry. He expected that being told of one's impending death, no matter that it had already happened and then unhappened, was disturbing to say the least.

But no one said anything, not even Clockwork. Not that Danny expected the other ghost to say anything yet. They'd both known for years that this explanation would come sooner or late, and even if it was much sooner than Danny had planned for, Clockwork still was willing to let Danny take the lead for now. No doubt that when Danny started butchering the paradox theories, Clockwork would float right in and correct him every five seconds.

"The fight where Sam," and Danny's eyes flickered to her again, "saw me disappear, that was when Clockwork took me. He told me what was happening, told me what needed to be done. I stayed here for a year, maybe a little more, before going back. The second I came back—time changed as you know it."

Jazz leaned forward, ready to assault Danny with questions, but Danny shook his head. "Technically it changed before then. When Clockwork took me, he was changing something that had happened in the timeline as it _should_ have happened then. I'd be dead if he hadn't." He grimaced a little and leaned forward himself, elbows on his knees, not looking anywhere but the floor. "There was a me that died, in the timeline that should have happened, but instead there were two of me here."

"One alive, me, "and Danny looked up with a self depreciating smile. "And another one, one that was dead."

"I died in that fight, the other Sam, the one in the timeline that Clockwork allowed to play out for all of those years with me in it, she watched me die, and then she watched me disappear. For that entire year that I was gone there was no doubt in anyone's mind that I was dead." And again Danny's eyes found Sam, this time unable to break away. "It changed her, it changed all of you, and Mom and Dad too. I know it did because I watched everything in the portal. After the first few weeks I only watched the timeline I was going to jump into. It—"

He stopped dead, his eyes finally tearing themselves away from Sam as he sat back in the chair and rubbed his face. "It hurt too much. I could see how badly you were all hurting, how badly the not knowing made everything. It was easier to not see, to not know. And I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. But it had to be done."

"But why did you have to go to there? Then. Whenever," Tucker asked, frowning. He knew that Danny had only just begun with the explanations, and he knew that there were things being kept from them. As much as he respected that telling it was hard for Danny, he didn't really care. He wanted answers and didn't really want to wait anymore. "If you were coming back, why did you have to go there?"

"Because the ghost that was supposed to have killed me was sent by someone. By Vlad," he answered softly. "Vlad was getting ready to mount an all out attempt at me and Mom. And I wasn't ready for it. Clockwork was right about that, I wasn't anywhere near ready. Vlad has twenty years on me, and he's kind of evil."

Strained laugh echoed in the mostly empty room at that and Danny gave a half hearted shrug. "Back then Vlad could do things that I never dreamed of being able to do myself."

This time Jazz didn't stay silent, even as she saw the pleading in Danny's eyes. "Like what?"

He shook his head again and looked away, like what he'd learned to do was something to be ashamed of. "The biggest thing was that Vlad was willing to hurt people who got in the way. I'm not very good at that, but Clockwork was never very insistent on me being able to do that."

Clockwork smiled at his guests, remaining silent as he waited for Danny to continue fumbling his way through his reasoning. He knew that there would be a time to speak, a time when Danny wouldn't be able to. He hadn't told Danny that, he knew the younger ghost was sure that Clockwork would only step in when it was time for enigmatic wisdom—something that Clockwork was very good at—but Clockwork knew better. He bent red eyes on Danny as if to tell him to continue on.

For his part Danny didn't give Clockwork the pointed glare he wanted to. He didn't want to explain it, he'd argued long and hard that Clockwork should be doing it since it was _he_ who rearranged time. But Danny had learned many years ago that arguing with Clockwork was impossible. He knew all of the arguments before they were made, and had an endless stream of memory and wisdom to draw on to manipulate Danny into doing exactly what it was Clockwork wanted done in the first place. And by the time that Danny agreed and did whatever was asked, he was pleased to be able to it.

"The year I was gone changed things enough that Vlad had to rethink his plans and wait. There was a lot of waiting involved because he had to try and figure out where I'd been, what I'd been doing. I was actually really good at hiding what I could do." The smiled on Danny's face was pleased as he said that. "I forced him into waiting it out for a long time, long enough for all of us to really get on with life. We graduated high school—you were the salutatorian, Sam, I was impressed—and get through college. I got married when I was twenty."

Icy blue eyes leveled a blank stare at all three. "I won't say who, and I won't discuss it with anyone, so don't ask. It was…" The glare softened and Danny's eyes found the finger on his left hand that was still unaccustomedly bare. "It was mine, and now it never really happened anyway, so there isn't anything to say about it. Okay?

Danny looked up as he felt a hand touch his shoulder and was surprised to see Clockwork floating next to him. He gave the ghost a nod a before anyone could understand what was happening he blinked out of sight and existence.

"This," Clockwork said as he shifted in a blurring of energy, "is my cue, I believe. You'll have to forgive him," he continued on a little softer. "This wasn't easy for him, any of it, much less bringing you three here. But it needed to be done, because the timeline where Danny died was _not_ supposed to have happened."

"That is privileged information, children," the ancient time ghost said as he waved his staff in the middle of the group and a wavering sphere of energy grew as he did. A picture formed inside, and it showed a much younger Danny, barely older than when he had left, fighting against Plasmius. And losing.

"In true time, Danny would have died in this battle."

Tucker and Jazz both gasped as the Danny in battle was surrounded by too many Plasmius' to count and the bluish energy suddenly took on a violent red haze as all of them attacked at once. As the glow died it was easy to see the broken and bleeding form of Danny Fenton plummeting to the ground. When it hit Sam cried out and turned her face away, a hand to her mouth and her eyes closed. Tucker and Jazz watched, eyes wide and unbelieving as they themselves appeared beneath the still floating, and obviously gloating, Plasmius. The window to the past closed abruptly and three sets of eyes swiveled to Clockwork.

"You saved his life," Sam said softly, trying to decide whether she should hate the ghost for putting them, all of them through this hell, or grateful for him having saved Danny's life.

Clockwork nodded. "I did, and broke the timeline when I did so. But Daniel is _my_ responsibility, as much from the Observant's orders, as from my own conscience." He lowered his staff and floated back into his chair. "There is a great deal that Daniel doesn't know, and that he'll find out before too terribly long. He'll need his friends then to help him preserve his own sanity as much as to help him with what he must do."

Clockwork let his staff lean against the chair, one hand absently caressing it as he held it. "While he was there he had to do a great many things that he didn't want to do, no matter that he would have done them in this timeline. One of them was to carry on like nothing had every happened. School, marriage, a job. The only thing that I did not ask of him was children. He would have refused outright, and for good reason. Everything in that other time no longer existed. Ever."

"That's a paradox," Jazz and Tucker both said abruptly, then glancing at each other with faint grins at what they'd done.

Clockwork nodded. "It is, in as much as Daniel returned to this time with things that he'd possessed in that time. When he came back here everything there ceased to exist. All of it; family, friends, lovers, because all of those would now be replaced in this time. It isn't parallel universes, you're correct in that assumption as to paradox. It is, most simply, the subtle machinations to ensure that time moves along the best and most safe route."

Sam raised her hand to her mouth, finally rejoining the conversation. "That's why you're doing this, to make is a better future. Like when you changed that other future."

"Exactly so, and I'll do it every chance that I can get," Clockwork answered without remorse. "A ghost I may be, but I still exist, and if I can change it, I choose not to live in a world that is filled with nothing but pain and sorrow and evil." He looked down and at his staff, a smirk playing across his lips as he shifted again. "And since Daniel has already lived paradox, it was easiest to let him play that role again. I asked, he answered, and now he has returned with his task still at hand."

Clockwork paused and considered his next words. "He'll need all of you very badly. The future is not set in stone, no matter what some would like to believe. I've done the best I can to help Daniel be ready for what is coming and what he has to do, but murder isn't something he is skilled at, and even knowing that it is the inevitable outcome to this battle, he doesn't want to."

Jazz bit her lip. "He has to kill Vlad, doesn't he? That's why you let him live in a parallel timeline, so that he could grow enough to be able to do it."

"Not just to be able to do it, Jasmine; murder can be done in cold blood and underhandedly," Clockwork pointed out. "It would be terribly easy for Daniel to simply kill Vlad with no warning. Vlad Masters' powers do not include the ability to sense ghosts in his presence or even vicinity."

Tucker gave a small snort. "Danny'd never even think of killing Vlad like that."

"I have," Sam muttered, and looked away from the glances sent her way by Tucker and Jazz both.

Clockwork smiled as his form shifted again, the look surprisingly feral on his face. "You've always been the most pragmatic person in his life," he said to Sam with no repudiation.

"It'd kill Danny if he did that," continued on once Clockwork was silent. "So you've been letting him train and gain power so he can take Vlad out in a straight fight."

"And he still doesn't want to do it," Danny said into the quiet from behind Sam, his ghost form floating absently in and his face much more relaxed than when he'd left. "I don't kill. I'm supposed to be the good guy, and that doesn't mean killing someone."

"Good guys are all about the greater good," Tucker told Danny, shifting where he sat so he could face the ghost. "And Vlad's death contributes to the greater good, Danny."

Danny snorted but didn't say anything as he dropped to the ground and shifted back to human, rolling his neck as he did. All three winced at the loud pops that echoed as his vertebrae each snapped and Sam faked a gag, making Danny chuckle a little. "Sorry," he offered before dropping back into his chair.

His eyes shifted over the three before finding Clockwork and asking the older ghost, "Did you tell them?"

Clockwork shook his head. "There's just the one thing for you to tell. They'll understand."

Danny glared darkly. "You always leave the fun jobs for me, don't you?"

Clockwork smiled faintly. "I told them what I was supposed to. I never said that I would tell them all of it."

Something that sounded vaguely like a curse came from Danny's mouth as he muttered, but he only sighed and sat back, hands together and fingers steepled as he regarded his friends and sister. "Clockwork told you that there were certain things that I had to do while I was there?" he asked, and when he got three nods in answer he sighed. "I hope you'll believe me when I say that it was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I think that the only thing that was ever worse was coming back here." He stopped, not explaining the statement, hoping that he would never have to.

With another sigh Danny softly said, "I told you that Vlad murdered you. I didn't tell you that I knew it would happen long before it ever did." His eyes lifted, dark and wet before he rubbed them, then looked at Sam and Jazz and Tucker again. "It was one of the things I had to let happen, so that Vlad would never play his strongest cards against me, so that I could live long enough to be able to stop him. To be able to kill him," Danny admitted.

"So you knew we were going to die, and you let us?" Tucker asked.

Danny nodded, looking away, shame and fear and worry screaming from his face.

"Did you know how?" Jazz asked.

Danny nodded again. "I knew when I went that you'd all die. Clockwork told me from the beginning. But when it got closer to the… to the murders, Clockwork would tell me exactly what was going to happen. It was less of a shock that way. He let me make sure that none of you suffered," Danny continued even as he stumbled over that last sentence.

"So you made sure that it didn't hurt? That Mom and Dad died instantly?" Jazz asked, and then reached a hand out towards Danny to touch his arm, trying to reassure him. "I'm not upset or angry, Danny. Clockwork explained a lot, I understand."

He gave her a grateful smile when his eyes finally met hers, and he nodded. "It was instant."

Jazz bit her lip, her blue-green eyes welling with tears that she dashed away with her free hand hurriedly in embarrassment. "I feel like I should be saying thank you. I know it's weird, but I do."

Danny dropped a hand to cover hers. "It's alright, Jazz. I get it. I _am_ a Fenton." He gave her a winning smile that miraculously didn't look forced, and she gave him a watery one right back. "It's a lot to take in, I know."

Jazz nodded and pulled her hand from Danny's as she sought the comfort of the couch, curling up on it in the corner like she did at home. Half of her wished she had one of her books with her so that she could open it, begin reading and, just for a little while, forget about the nightmare that Danny had plunged them all into. That Danny had been plunged into himself. It would be so easy to be angry with him for bringing her into this, for telling her the things he had, to feel justified in saying that if he'd never come back then there never would have been this kind of hurt and sorrow and pain. And yet, at the same time, a greater part of Jazz knew that whatever she was feeling Danny must be feeling it so much worse.

He'd _lived_ through all of the things he said, not just had to hear them spoken of. To know that he'd been forced to watch the people he loved die, one by one, and at an enemy's hands… Worse yet, knowing he couldn't do anything. That was true pain, and Jazz knew that it was the reason for the shadows in the depths of her brother's eyes every time he looked at her, or Sam or Tucker or anyone.

The silence was thick and rich with tension, and only utter self control kept Danny from shifting in his seat as he waited. He wasn't sure what he was waiting for, but he knew that he was waiting. Maybe for the okay from Clockwork saying that enough had been said, shared, and that Danny could take them all back home and find his way to his bed. He could try and find his way to some semblance of peace, sanctuary, the comfort—maybe—of dreams.

But the patience broke before the silence did, and Danny stood, stretched again before glancing at Clockwork. "Alright, if we're done here I think there's a few pizzas with our names on them back at my place." He grinned a little. "Or there will be once we head back and order them." He turned a cocky smile on Clockwork. "Do you think we could work on cell reception in the Ghost Zone sometime?"

Clockwork simply gave a long suffering sigh at the young ghost's attempt at wit.

Danny cocked his head at Sam, Tucker and Jazz. "Come on, let's get out of here. I don't want to be serious anymore."

He held a hand out and Sam rose to take it. The other one was offered and Jazz took it, looping an arm through Tucker's as she tried to give a real smile to her brother. She knew it didn't quite make it as his faltered a little, but it didn't really make much of a difference. Green energy was already flaring and she knew that Danny was activating his medallion.

"Danny, wait," Sam said suddenly, the hiss of ectoenergy loud enough to cover the ticking of clocks and gears that none of them had even realized were there. She looked up at him, purple eyes wide and almost afraid. "H-how did I die?"

Danny tensed next to her, the faint snapping of bone echoing in his ears, screams rising and falling. Red splashed his vision and Danny closed his eyes against it, fighting to forget, fighting with everything he had so that he could never remember what had been done to her. He swallowed, breathed in and out in long deep breaths before he managed to block it out and—nearly—forget what she had looked like dangling from Vlad's grasp moments before—

_Stop._

The word was silent and nowhere but his mind. Nevertheless, Danny was grateful for it as he turned dark and somehow empty blue eyes on Sam.

"He broke your neck," he said evenly.

He could see in her eyes that she didn't believe him, but his conscience wouldn't allow him anything else. Better the lie that she knew than the truth that she didn't.

"He broke your neck, I almost killed him, and Clockwork decided that I was ready to come back. That's it, end of story."

Sam opened her mouth to argue but for a moment remember what Danny had said only a little while before. _Then you, Sam. Right in front of me._ The more she thought about it the more she realized that it would explain his reaction to her question, and Sam closed her mouth and nodded. That was probably why he'd never said it in the first place. It was one thing to admit that you knew before hand how your friends and family died when you weren't there to witness it, but to have actually watched? To have been forced to witness the murder first hand? No, Sam wouldn't ask again.

"Let's go home," Danny said as he turned away from them and towards the glowing green portal that was opening itself behind him.


	11. Chapter 10

There and Back Again

10

The dinner had been a wonderful and brilliant idea. Danny only wished he could have taken the credit for it. But he was a man who gave credit where credit was due, and as he sat at the dark wood table he'd chosen for his dining room, he couldn't help but smile at Jazz and Sam each in turn. In the days since he'd taken them to Clockwork and given them some, most, of the truth, things had been better and easier between all of them. If Danny still felt the outsider he knew he needed to chalk it up to the fact that these people he was with weren't the ones he'd known for eleven years, had lived with and loved with and mourned with. But they were his, they were really and truly _his_, and for Danny that was making enough of a difference that it was almost easy to forget the truth behind it.

Sam was to his left, then Tucker and then Jazz, and his mother and then his father to his right to complete the circle. Everyone was laughing as they passed bowls and plates back and forth, even if Sam was threatening to kill Tucker for dropping a piece of the steak on her plate. He smiled at her unrepentantly and simply scooped it up with his fork to gnaw on it before dropping it to his plate in favor of the baked potatoes being shoved at him by Jazz. The only person missing was Valerie, but she'd been honest when she declined.

"It's not that I don't want to, Danny, but you know how things in Amity can be like when you make plans," she'd said as she held the portal alert to his eyes with a wry smile. "It's my night. Maybe next time."

Once a rejection from her would have damn near killed him. Now Danny only wished that another friend could be there.

He'd helped more than Sam and Jazz were saying, and even as Danny complained at their fickle affections (and how he loved the way Sam blushed as he arched a brow at her as he said it) and conceded that all he'd really done was man the grill and make sure that Tucker didn't manage to steal every last steak off of it. Though he did think that Tucker managed to snag one somehow between grill and table. But that was why Danny had made several extra. That and the fact that his dad had already had two pieces and seemed to be making eyes at a third with an appetite that made his mother smile.

The good spirits stayed high through the clean up, quickly done by Jazz and Danny as Sam brought out the dessert. It was a blueberry cobbler that she said was completely vegan, not that he understood how it could be anything but. It was made with flour and fruit and not too much else. Maybe an egg, and Sam didn't eat those either. But whatever she wanted to call it, it was excellent and, like the steak, was devoured quickly and efficiently by the males present.

It was over far quicker than Danny wanted it to be, but even he had to admit that it was late. The hands of the clock were ticking ever closer to the witching hour as Danny said goodnight to his parents and sister with hugs and kisses and blessed I love you's that he gave them like there would be no tomorrow until all that was left was a pile of dishes in both kitchen and on table and two very pleased friends who were sprawling themselves around his living room.

Sam was curled in one of the recliners and Tucker had stretched himself out on the couch, making Danny chuckle as he lounged in the other recliner as the clock finally tolled midnight. "You guys aren't going home, are you?" he asked with a grin.

"Do we look like we're going anywhere?" Sam asked with a yawn as she begin the task of unlacing her boots.

Danny chuckled. "Not in the least. I could just phase them off of you," he offered, then shrugged as she shook her head.

"I'd still have to lace them back on in the morning," she said with another yawn.

"I've got a guest room, you know," Danny said as he glanced between Sam and Tucker both. He did have a guest room. One. And he wasn't exactly feeling charitable to giving up the privacy of his own room.

Tucker laughed at Danny as if he could see the man doing the math in his head. "Dude, I'm not sharing a bed with Sam," and Sam rolled her eyes. "Do you have a blanket though? Because this couch is just too comfortable."

Danny gave Tucker a smug smirk. "Why do you think I bought it?"

"Because I'd have killed you if you'd gotten real leather," Sam interjected as the laces finally came undone enough that she kicked first one and then the other boot off to land with thunks on the wood of the floor.

"And there is that," Danny admitted. "But no, when I tried it out in the store I actually fell asleep on it. That thing is like heaven in my living room."

Sam laughed and Danny couldn't help but smile at the sound as he yawned himself and stood. "Come on, Sam, I'll show you to your room," Danny said and walked past Tucker even as Tucker glared and demanded a blanket.

Without a second thought Danny reached through a wall and tugged a blanket from whatever had been on the other side. He threw it at the other man and grinned when it pegged Tucker right in the face, making Tucker yelp even as he began curling himself around the blanket. "Lights off," Tucker demanded, and Danny just smiled at Sam as he palmed the switch sending the living room into darkness.

"It's this way, he said softly, suddenly very aware that this Sam had never been in his house and wouldn't know from experience where the room was.

"It's nice," she said as she followed Danny inside, violet eyes taking in the way he'd chosen to decorate, the colors and the warm wood of the furniture. Danny's eyes found hers and he looked away.

"You'll probably want something to sleep in, right? Hang on a sec," and he slipped back out into the hall before disappearing through a door a little farther down and on the other side of the hall. Moments later he was reappearing with a neatly folded pile of clothes in his arms that he shoved at her before pulling his hands back and folding his arms across his chest. "So, um, goodnight. I'll see you in the morning."

Sam could only watch him in confusion as he disappeared again, this time closing the door behind him, and Sam shook her head. "I guess it's a guy thing," she muttered as she shook out the clothes he handed her. She almost laughed. The pajama pants were fine, they were completely normal, but she couldn't help but chuckle at the shirt. It seemed that, no matter how much time had passed, she'd rubbed off on him.

With a smile that stretched into a yawn Sam stripped off her own shirt and jeans, folding them neatly and laying them on a chair that was angled in one corner, then tugging the pants up and shaking her head as she tied the drawstring as tight as she could get it. They still hung at her hips, but it was better than nothing. She quickly slipped her bra off and tucked it under her folded clothes and pulled the black shirt on, fingers brushing across the raised test that read _Bite me_, with another grin before tugging the cover from the bed and tucking herself beneath it.

She yawned yet again, sighed, and then snuggled her head down into the pillow before closing her eyes. She was very nearly asleep when she realized that the shirt smelled like Danny.

---

He wasn't a morning person and she knew it. Hell, Danny had never even tried to pretend that he could get upright without a pot and a half of coffee in the mornings. She'd known him long enough to know that, too. He'd suffered through high school without the caffeine rush until Tucker and Sam had introduced him to it during midterms of senior year. He survived on it from then on straight through college and into the working world. And that was why Danny couldn't even begin to understand why she was even _trying_ to get him out of bed without coffee.

Or sex, because that always woke him up to, and Danny rolled to his other side to try and escape the poking and prodding she was putting him through.

"Danny, come on," she whispered softly into his ear. He twitched at the way her breath tickled him. "Sweetie, please get up. We have the day off and I want to spend it with you."

He smiled and reached behind him to pull her closer, trying to convince her without saying anything to crawl back under the blankets and snuggle back into sleep. "Mmm," he managed as he rolled over again, eyes still closed. "It's too early, babe. Let's just go back to sleep."

She laughed and it was music to his ears. "Come on, Sleepyhead. It's time to wake up."

"I don't want to," he said again, still refusing to open his eyes. It was so nice just to have her back with him, and he knew that opening his eyes and waking up would ruin the dream.

"There's not much time left, Danny. Please, please wake up," she begged. "Please wake up and stay with me today," and her voice was so soft, he nearly couldn't hear it.

He shook his head as he slipped an arm to her waist. "Just a few more minutes, Sam. I'm just so tired. Okay, honey?"

There was no answer and it sent Danny shooting upright in his bed, eyes startled wide as he realized that he was alone, that there was no one else there and that he was clutching a pillow much as he would a lover. There was a blur of movement at the corner of his eye and Danny's head whipped to the right hoping against hope that _she_ was there. He had a moment where he saw a hint of violet eyes, and graceful smile, and then it was gone even as he reached a hand out towards the shadow where Sam had stood moments before in nowhere but his mind.

"Sam," he whispered, and raised a hand to wipe his eyes of the burning in them. Much to Danny's surprise his cheeks were already wet, and when he looked back he realized so was the pillow. Like he had known even as he dreamed that it wasn't her, that she wasn't here, that she was nowhere to be found now, lost to a timeline that he had destroyed when he came back to the time he'd left more than a decade earlier.

"Oh god, please, it hurts," he said into the dark even as he lay back and rolled so that his face was buried in the pillow before he said anything that might be heard. He was coherent enough to realize that neither Sam nor Tucker needed to hear him grieving for a girl who had never existed anywhere but here, a girl that was sleeping ten feet and a million miles away from him. And this time when he pleaded for the pain to stop, he was almost sure that no one heard him.

If Sam hadn't woke at the first plea it would have worked. Even with an entire hallway between the room she slept in and the room he obviously wasn't asleep in, Sam could still hear Danny. It was painful, heartbreaking to hear it and know that there was nothing that she could do. She had a strong suspicion that whoever he'd married had died, and most likely at Vlad's hands given the murderous spree that other halfa had been on in that life. She pulled the blanket up over her head, eyes hot and burning as she closed them and tried not to hear it as Danny cried.

She knew he didn't want to be heard, the way he tried to stay quiet was enough that she knew it. But there were some things that seemed to be louder in the middle of the night than if done in the silence of the day, and grief was one of them. Sam knew, she'd cried for her mother and her father in the dark peace of the night, and then for her grandmother too when she finally admitted that there was no other alternative that to admit that she was slipping away mentally.

Oh yes, this was something Sam could relate to far too well. Especially in those long, cold, empty months after Danny disappeared. _That_ had been grief, and she never wanted to live through that aching and wrenching pain again. Even now, just hearing him, she could feel the gasping breaths in her lungs as she tried to remember how to breathe when nothing else mattered, not even her own life. The pain as he nails dug into her palms and cut bloody crescents there.

With a frantic breath Sam sat up, flinging the blanket and sheets from her as she stumbled out of the bed as quietly as she could. She felt her way across the floor blindly and when her hands found the knob she turned it and fled into the dark of the hallway. She could hear him better now, for all that he truly was being quiet. A pillow, she figured, over his head, or face buried in it. Just as she had so many nights three years ago.

Sam bit her lip and stumbled as she found the open space that was the living room and tripped onto the couch making Tucker reach out, startled, but unsurprised, to steady her. Sam's eyes adjusted to the dark much more quickly that she expected, but her mind moved enough to realize that she could see Tucker because of the glow of his PDA where it lay on the floor in front of the couch. She watched him look at her with pity, send the same sad expression down the hall towards Danny's room, and then he opened his arms.

She didn't want for a second invitation but flung herself into them with a muffled cry, burrowing her face into the warmth of his sweater and snugging her hands tight to her ears so that she wouldn't' hear. There was no point to it, she realized as a shiver shook her, and she felt Tucker shudder, too. Her face lifted and she saw the faint telltale flash of silvery-white light slipping from beneath Danny's bedroom door to light the hallway for a moment before disappearing. No matter that it made no sound, they both knew when he left, seconds after the change and shooting up through the roof.

All they could do was turn bleak stares onto each other.

---

He looked for a fight, not caring who it was so long as he could release some of the pain, some the burning ache where his heart was. He found it at the docks first, with the Box Ghost, who crumpled like one of his cardboard boxes when Danny showed him no mercy. He found it second with Johnny and Kitty and Shadow, and none of them stood a chance against him as Danny unleashed the raw emotion inside of him with a cry, a scream, a blazing glory of ectoplasm that withered everything in its path.

He found it third with a ghost he didn't know and Valerie. Dear, loyal, dangerous Valerie who was almost getting her ass handed to her on a platter as Danny jumped in and took a blow that was meant for her. And all she could do was scream at him and draw another ectogun to train on him. The sheer nerve she had at turning fire on him only seconds after he'd saved her from a blow that would have really injured her made his eyes flare with sickly green light that lit its way across his shoulder and down his arms. It flared out into a shield just in top to stop the blast she'd fired at him from hitting him dead in the face, and Danny glowered at her knowing that the look he was giving her was never going to help his case as the friendly and helpful ghost he always tried to be.

"What," he bit out as he shrugged the shield off and let a tendril of ectoenergy knock her gun from her hand, "the hell is wrong with you? I come and _help_ you and you _shoot me?!?_" He knew he was dangerously close to a wail with the intensity he'd put into his words and immediately reined his power back in and tamped it down as harshly as he could without turning human.

"You're a ghost," Valerie ground out at him, holding her wrist and clenching her fingers where he'd stung her when he'd disarmed her. "I hunt ghosts, especially ghosts as dangerous as you."

"Oh, Val," he said mockingly. "You have no idea how dangerous I am."

He dove then, losing altitude as fast as he could until he was close enough to the ground to make out individual blades of grass. In the blink of an eye he'd pulled up, impossibly up, his legs long since having blurred into a ghostly tail that trailed yards behind him. Danny knew with the speeds he was moving at there was no chance for Valerie to lock onto him for a shot, even as she held her uninjured hand out and a trio of swirling red boxes rose from the confines of her suit to try and aim at him. He could almost hear her cursing when she realized that she wouldn't be able to aim and he slipped to the side as she began firing random shots into his flight path. She missed, every one of them, and Danny could only smile in a cold baring of teeth as he barreled in to the ghost that Valerie had forgotten about when her tunnel vision for Danny had taken over.

The ghost shrieked as he drove it up and up and up into the air with a sudden flaring of energy around him to sear and sting at the other ghost's form. It struggled and Danny let it, turning himself intangible and flying through the ghost to turn in a blur of shadow, one hand whipping behind his back to grab the Fenton thermos he habitually kept there. Then the ghost was gone in a blindingly bright vortex and a glare of swirling blue. He gave a satisfied growl and capped the thermos, hooking it back on to his belt before taking a moment to pause and look down at where Valerie last was. She wasn't there and Danny only sighed in exasperation and he stopped his heart and halted his breathing to listen.

The whine of the jet sled was faint even from such close range, but Danny had never denied that Valerie's equipment was top of the line, then and now. He felt rather than heard the guns in her suit charge up to fire and flipped himself up, feet flying forward and then up and over until he'd landed lightly just behind Valerie on the sled.

"Checkmate," he snarled as he yanked her arms back and dragged her back to tumble from the jet sled.

He gave her credit for pure nerve and an iron stomach. A lesser woman would have screamed the entire way down, but Valerie didn't. It was habit more than anything else that saved the sled from crashing as she clicked her heels together and retrieved it back into her suit, but he knew that there wasn't anything that was going to save her the way he'd locked her arms behind her as he exerted his power and brought them to a slow stop as he corrected their trajectory. Once righted he let go of her wrists and turned her around, slamming her back into a wall as he pressed one arm to her throat and glared at her with an intensely burning green gaze.

"I've never offered to hurt you, Valerie Gray, and I'm not going to start now, but you need to accept that I'm _not the enemy_," he ordered her. He could see her angry eyes behind the transparent face mask and bit back the sudden and undeniable urge to shake some sense into her as her lips twisted in a snarl.

"You ruined my life, you're evil," she insisted. "You destroy the town, put good people in harm's way."

"So do you."

Her retort was fast and sharp. "You're the reason Danny Fenton was gone," she choked out in fury. "You disappeared the day he left and come back the day he returned. You took him and you came back to take him."

Danny gave a choked laugh before looking her in the eyes. "You know the sad thing is you're almost right." He let go of her and stepped back, watching as she raised her arm and let loose a shot. It was blocked by another shield before it could hit, and Danny shook his head. "I'm not going to let you kill me right now, Val. If I die it'll be in a fair fight. But if you want to kill me so damned bad," and Danny sighed and let go of his ghost, "well, now you know where I live."

He watched her face as she got her first real look at him, and almost smiled at the shock and horror. Then he let go of his humanity and disappeared completely.


	12. Chapter 11

There and Back Again

11

Much to Danny's surprise Valerie never showed up at his house with guns blazing. In fact, the only time anyone had seen her in the week since he'd revealed himself was when she traded off the portal alert with Tucker and Sam. He hadn't told either of them exactly what happened, but he had let them know that he'd told Valerie. He'd even made a point of telling them that it had happened when tensions were running high, but nothing beyond that and he certainly hoped that Valerie wouldn't tell them how he'd lost his temper, he didn't really need the stress of them knowing how easily his temper was frayed now. Especially with Sam. She'd been avoiding him and Danny wasn't sure exactly how to tell her that he didn't want her away from him, that he wanted to spend more time with her.

She was a sensitive girl—woman—and he knew that she must have seen the pain in his eyes every time he looked at her, but Danny knew the truth behind it. And it helped that the pain died a little more each day. Not forgotten, never forgotten, but knowing that what he'd lived never really happened… He almost believed it now. Wanted to believe it.

It was just complicated, like everything else in his life was. That was the only explanation he could find when he found himself, not at home or bugging Tucker or Sam, but with his family in the park. Hunting ghosts. It was ironic to say the least, and all he could do was try not to laugh hysterically as he glanced at his watch wondering when he could attempt and escape from the insanity. It was bad enough that with his ghost half now actively roaming the sky, sightings, which were undeniably inevitable, were constantly being reported to them. But the fact that his father was still as obsessed with catching the Phantom (with his mother a bare shred of sanity behind him) only made it even more laughable.

But, and he didn't sigh, refused to sigh, Sam and Tucker had promised to rescue him. Sam had said after her meeting, Tucker had said eventually. Only much begging and pleading had put a time on it and they swore up and down they'd be no later than five, earlier if possible. Of course his watch had already clicked its little hands past the six, then the seven and eight and were now rapidly approaching the nine. _Fifteen minutes at the most,_ he reassured himself as he dropped his wrist again and readjusted the Fenton Foamer where it rested by its on his shoulder. He'd used once, and only once, to spray a small ghostly mosquito.

The damned contraption had misfired and ended up coating half a tree along with the mosquito in sticky green foam.

He looked at his watch again and this time Danny did sigh. Fourteen minutes (and a half) to go before Sam and Tucker rescued him. He fancied that he saw something akin to sympathy on Jazz's face as she peered over their father's shoulder to study a small monitor he was holding. When Jack fired his weapon Danny had to bite back a snort; there was nothing in the direction that he had fired, visible or otherwise. He'd have seen it as clearly as anyone else if there were something there, or at least sensed anything invisible to his sight. No, nothing there, or anywhere else in the park. Except the faintly glowing blue rat that was sitting at the edge of the fountain, but it was practically a non-entity on Danny's enmity scale and could thusly be ignored and left to the bath it seemed to be taking.

He was beyond twitchy, as much as he enjoyed spending time with his parents. Danny schooled his face into a dutiful expression of complete and total involvement. "Do you catch many ghosts this way?" Danny asked as he sidled up next to his mother checking surreptitiously that her Fenton Bazooka was aimed well away from him and that the tracking device that had been installed while he was gone wasn't picking up on him. He'd been taking great pains to try and cloak his ectoenergy with his humanity; it would really suck if during the close test it failed and Danny found himself on the run.

Much to his surprise, his mother laughed. "Of course not, sweetie. This is just to humor your father." Her smile faded a little as she added, "It was one of the few things that he really enjoyed while you were gone."

Danny gave her an apologetic wince. "I am sorry about that," and he held up a hand to stall any of her protests. "No matter how many times you tell me not to worry, it doesn't change that I _am_ sorry. I don't know if I'll ever stop saying it, okay Mom?"

Maddie's smile slipped away but she slipped and arm around her son as he automatically shifted the Foamer to his other side. "I can understand that, Danny. I just wish you'd tell us where you've been and what you've been doing." She looked up at Danny seeming to not notice the way Danny tensed next to her. "It's a mom thing, to want to know."

Danny nodded, half of his attention on his mother and the other taken by a practice of long standing habit as he let his ectoenergy out searching for spectral activity. Only one in particular, and he already knew that a check only a minute or two ago had been empty, but where this ghost was concerned he'd prefer to be safe over sorry. Besides, with the way that Desiree twisted her wishes, he'd probably wind up with her being sent to that alternate time to see exactly what he'd been up to. Or maybe taking the place of the other Maddie who no longer existed. Or—Danny stopped himself before his brain fried itself with trying to think of all the ways that particular wishing ghost could ruin the simple, wishful statement his mother had made.

But it was safe, none of the ectoenergy in the park was remotely similar to Desiree's, or even familiar, and Danny started to follow his father and sister blindly before he stopped cold in his tracks. Other ectosignatures, there were other ghosts present and none that he could recognize. And they were headed his way, at speed.

"Mom, we've got trouble coming," Danny said as he let go of her and shrugged the Fenton Foamer off of his shoulder, dropping it to the ground so that he could reach for one of the smaller sidearm's Maddie kept on her for when the charge ran out of the Fenton Bazooka. "Get Dad and Jazz, it's coming from the south entrance."

Whatever was on his face, Maddie obeyed without hesitation as Danny checked the charge of the ectogun he'd taken from her with practiced ease. It had a full charge, and Danny knew that on a low level it was good for at least eighty or so shots. Wait, the south entrance? Wasn't that in the direction of Sam's office? And Tucker's apartment, too, making Danny's heart freeze in his chest as his eyes began to waver from blue to green with violent worry. He checked the charge again and reset the power level to high, halving the number of shots he had, but it was negligible for someone with aim like his.

"Max level, Mom," Danny called over his shoulder as he took off in a sprint towards the now burgeoning levels of ectoplasm that seemed to be congregating by the south entrance instead of moving for him.

The park was small enough that thirty second at top speed had Danny within sight of the arch and his eyes narrowed as he saw Sam and Tucker both there and under attack. Tucker was wielding his Fenton thermos to little effect, the of it was dented in and whenever he tried to activate it the thermos sputtered and died before it had even begun to wind up and send out the ghost catching vortex that Tucker so desperately needed. Sam was crouched behind one of the pillars of the arch carefully aiming and making the yellowish ectoplasm from the attacking ghost fly with every shot.

The ghost was one that Danny had never seen, an oversized tree with knobby appendages seemingly ending in some type of finger made of wickedly carved and pointed wood. One of the claw like fingers scarped the stone of the arch Sam was hiding behind and left a furrow in it inches deep as Danny skidded to a halt and gave a loud shot, making the ghost turn to him. Ghosts, Danny realized as another one of the tree ghosts shimmered into sight perilously near Tucker, and Danny shouted again at Tucker before squeezing the trigger and sending a half dozen shots at the tree in an attempt to distract it from Tucker as he rolled to the side and then got up, darting behind a car for more cover.

"Sam, duck!" Danny cried as he began running towards her, thinking that he could knock her out of the way of the claws that were stretching to cut at her. He wasn't going to make it, and Danny began laying random fire at both of the massive ghosts.

It missed, miraculously, and Danny aimed a few more shots at the ghost's head before turning fire on the other specter. In the back of his mind he was trying to keep a running tally on how many shots he's made, how many had hit, where and to what effect. It was an annoyance but he tried not to pay attention to it when nothing but the dwindling charge sprung to mind. He glanced back to see his family cresting the kill and well able to see what he was doing and who he was trying to help, and he thought he heard his dad shout at him. The shout was echoed by a scream and Danny turned again, frozen in place as he saw the claw aimed, not for Sam, but for the stone arch she was hiding behind, a stone arch that could be—would be—collapsed to bury her alive.

"No," he said in a strangled whisper. "Not again."

The world blurred around him in a haze of green and black and Danny closed his eyes for a second, only a second, and when he opened them again the haze was fading and he raised his arms. Green energy shimmered for a moment at his fingertips before Danny let it fly out and shift around him and Sam both in a shield. The shield bowed, strained as rock tumbled down on it, but held firm as one side made stone slide down it in pieces. He could feel Sam pressed against his back, her face tucked against his shoulder blade as he trembled with the fury he felt that someone would try and hurt Sam again. Her hands were clutching at the jacket he wore and Danny had to hiss as some of his power leaked from the shield as it began to overload under all of the energy he was ramming into it.

"Let go," he ordered in a strained voice, and he felt Sam hesitate. "Now, Sam, I don't want to hurt you."

She let go and Danny drew the shield in on itself before expanding it suddenly to send rock flying in all forward directions. The action was abrupt and none of the debris hit anyone who wasn't on his side, though Danny had worried for a moment before he'd gotten a good glance around. Jazz and his mother were both aiming for and hitting the ghostly trees, making them creak and groan beneath the onslaught. His father, however, was taking potshots at a set of green glowing vultures that Danny found more than a little familiar. Everything about them was from the small red fezes on their bulbous heads to the Yiddish accent they taunted the senior Fenton in.

"You son of a bitch," Danny breathed as his eyes locked on to the dead birds, and he clenched his fists. A flare of light built at his waist and Danny had nearly shifted when Sam jerked him back.

"Danny, don't," she said desperately. "You can't."

He turned wild blue eyes on her, blinked and she stepped back, a little startled at the way they slid from blue to green so quickly and abruptly. "I'm not going to let him do it again, Sam, I don't think I'd survive it."

"Him? What are you…" Sam stopped as she looked past him and realized what he was talking about, knowing that this timeline's Vlad had finally played his opening hand. "You're not going to lose anyone," she said surely and hoisted her ectogun back up as she lifted an eyebrow upon seeing Tucker take a flying tackle at one of the ghost vultures, only to soar through it and land on the ground with a thud.

"Promise me, Sam?" he asked as he stepped back away from her, energy flickering all across his body with the effort of will he was making to hold the change in.

Sam slid her finger to the trigger as she watched him, and her heart twisted. "He killed your wife, didn't he?" she asked as she cocked the ectogun. Danny nodded, anguish and misery swimming in his eyes, and Sam nodded in return. "Alright then. Let's go get some old fashioned revenge," she said as she started off past Danny.

Danny turned and followed, aiming at one of the trees with the gun and firing. He tossed it aside as he realized that with the dying charge it was useless compared to what he could do without it, and Danny strode up to the tree that was attacking his mother and shoved a hand into it even as he shifted from human to ghost. "Don't touch my mother," he told it coldly as it looked down in surprise to see the arm sticking out from its trunk. Then it looked at him and its eyes widened as it saw the fire in his eyes suddenly seep out and across its trunk.

"Danny?" his mother called to him as Danny pushed more power into the fire, and he had a bare thought that maybe he should tell everyone to duck before the tree exploded and rained little pieces of undead wood across the other combatants.

He gave her a nod before a scream from behind him had him turning on his heel. Jazz was down, one of the wooden razor claws plunged through her shoulder. She was still trying to shoot at the thing and alternating between curses of pain and curses of fury as the ectogun failed her. No power, Danny knew as his world shimmered again, green to black and back as he emerged from nowhere to float right in front of the tree ghost's face.

"First my mom, now my sister? Vlad sure doesn't hire you guys for your brains, does he?"

This time when the fire began to spread Danny yanked the tree up with one hand, hating the strangled gasp that Jazz gave as his tug pulled the wood from her shoulder, but not stopping until the tree was high enough above them that the wail he let loose on it only sent the sonic waves skyward into the tree. When he looked back down he saw his mother helped Jazz with Sam at her side, carelessly ripping her t-shirt to shreds to try and stop the bleeding. And there was Tucker, still trying to help his father and failing miserably. It wasn't Tucker's fault, Danny saw that right off.

The vultures were flying patterns that Danny was intimately familiar with, and he knew that to an unpracticed eye there was almost no chance of hitting one. With a satisfied glare Danny let an ectoblast fly from his palm drive one of the vultures into the dirt. Tucker shouted in approval as he mimicked the shot and someone hit another one. The third realized with a squawk that it was alone and dove for Jack.

Danny almost couldn't believe it when his father began lifting off of the ground, and he shouted at the vulture. "Get out of my dad!" he ordered it as he dropped down in the air. "This is between me and Vlad, leave my family and friends alone."

There was another squawk and Danny could only watch in horror as the vulture did as he ordered almost immediately letting his father drop nearly his full height to the ground to land with a snapping of bone. He gave chase knowing that he was the only one who could and someone would take care of his father, only stopping when all three of the ghostly birds had been sent screaming into the Ghost Zone to seek Vlad out and give him a message from Danny. _Touch them again and death will be the least of your worries._

It made him sick to know, and Danny let go of his ghost half with relief as he trudged up the far side of the hill as he headed back to the scene of the battle to try and help. It was well in hand when he got there, two ambulances and his mother efficiently directing Sam and Tucker in collecting discarded weapons and anything else that might have been left behind.

"Mom?" he asked hesitantly as he found his way to her before she could climb into the ambulance with her husband.

She turned in surprise, but not fear, and Danny felt some of the fear in his heart die. "Danny, you're alright." She narrowed her eyes at him. "You _are_ alright, aren't you?"

He nodded and she smiled in relief. "Your father broke his leg, Jazz needs stitches and some blood. They'll be alright."

"Mom, I—"

Maddie shook her head and pressed a hand to Danny's cheek. "We can talk about it later, Danny. Just meet us at the hospital and don't worry about it."

Danny nodded and watched as she climbed into the ambulance before the paramedics closed the doors. A moment later it was headed back onto the road, sirens wailing and followed by the second that carried Jazz and, Danny realized as he saw that Sam was the only one left with him, Tucker.

"She understands, Danny," Sam said as she slipped and arm through his. "Let's get to the hospital."

---

It was most annoying the way the boy always seemed to rise to the challenge. Vlad couldn't understand it. It should have been, not full proof, but enough to let him get his hands on the friends. He would have gone after the sister, but he worried that taking a family member at this early stage in the siege would harm Maddie irreparably. After all, she'd only just regained her son. And he wanted his Maddie hale in mentis compos when she became his bride. Despite careful planning and hard work on his subordinates' parts, Daniel was still alive and well and free, and so were his friends.

But, _but_, there had been so much learned simply by watching, and well worth the loss of his feathered compatriots. They're returned and delivered the laughable edict, after all, how could Daniel actually hurt him? Truly, the thought was beyond amusing. And after they'd returned they'd disintegrated into a gooey and steaming pile of ectoplasm that Vlad refused to go near.

"So, so, young Daniel," he murmured as he rewatched the footage of the battle. "Telekinesis, and your ectoblasts certainly don't leave much to be desired." Vlad narrowed his eyes on the wavering figure of Danny's ghost form as he pursed his lips. "Fire? And the infamous Ghostly Wail."

He considered the footage for a minute before rewinding it and watching again. "Such sacrifice from you, my boy. Let's see if we can't make someone else play dead."

He snapped his fingers and a dull skinned ghost appeared at his elbow. "The girl, the one he was wiling to let everything go for. I want you to take her, and I want you to kill her."


	13. Chapter 12

There and Back Again

12

The sounds and smell of the hospital seemed to follow Danny as he headed for home, trying not to give in to the urge to shift to ghost and fly there at breakneck speed. Instead he shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket and slouched along the road at a fast walk. He needed to burn the adrenaline off, he knew, or he'd be awake for the rest of the night. Both his father and sister were fine, though Jazz had been admitted for observation. Danny assumed that it was because of the nature of her wound—after all, how often did a doctor, even the ones in Amity Park, get to treat a stab wound made from an ectoplasmic being? With Jazz safe and his father surely on his way home to a soft bed a bucket load of fudge, Danny had no worries that the man would find the cast on his leg unwieldy.

Tucker had already gone home with the intention of calling Valerie and apprising her of what happened. He certainly didn't envy either of them that conversation, especially with the way Valerie had and still was reacting to his half-dead status. And there was still the to-be-had conversation with his mother and father, though Danny wasn't sure if Maddie had told Jack the shocking news that his son was the infamous ghost boy of Amity Park that he'd been chasing for years. He could only hope that his father took it better than Valerie had, more like how his mother had. Of course, that could have been because she'd found out in the middle of a life and death situation and he'd been the one to save hers.

Even the thought of his father's pending reaction could only keep Danny distracted for so long. As always, his mind turned back to Sam with a stutter and painful lurch no matter how hard he tried to stop it. She'd left long before anyone else, without even a goodbye to him. He'd seen her with his mom and Tucker while Jack and Jazz were still being treated, but that had been after they'd all been assured of a path to quick recovery. He remembered he'd gone to find a soda machine, ended up with a malfunctioning water fountain, and when he'd come back she was gone.

His feet turned from habit built by years onto his road and sent him towards his driveway on autopilot he as his mind turned thoughts of Sam over and over inside his head. What he really wanted to do was to call her, fly to her apartment, beg her to talk to him. He hadn't really thought about it often, even before he'd gone along with Clockwork's plan, but he could admit to himself (if no one else) that he needed her badly. She'd been, since they were kids, teenagers, his rock, his comfort, the shoulder he could lean on when bad things happened. He could vividly remember the way he'd opened up to her after first getting his ghost powers and so many times after that, sharing with her his hopes and fears so long as they weren't centered around her.

Danny didn't try digging his key from his pocket, he only glanced around with tired and dull blue eyes before slipping through the door and inside. He played the same trick with the wall between his bedroom and the living room, phasing straight through the closet and into the peace that was of his making. He frowned a little as he shrugged his jacket off and tugged his shirt up over his head to toss it in the hamper next to the bathroom door. Boots, socks and jeans followed, and Danny scooped up his towel where it was strewn across the foot of his bed as he made his way to the bathroom in nothing but boxers. Those, too, went and he stepped into the shower, turning the water on full blast and biting his tongue as icy water hit him and froze his flesh before it began to warm up.

It helped, the soap and water. Even if it was only mental, Danny's tension seemed to ease a bit as he washed himself, closing his eyes and letting the water stream down his face as he imagined it rinsing away every hardship he'd lived, every impossible pain he knew was in the near future, every memory of the way she would look at him, touch him, kiss him, move beneath him. It was getting harder, day by day, for Danny to remember that she wasn't his anymore, that technically she'd never been his.

He was startled out of his thoughts by the sound of knocking on his door. Not the bell, thank god, it had been as annoying in this life as in the other, and he'd cut the wires to it within minutes of signing paperwork on the house. He made a mental note to remove it when he began on the exterior of the house after he'd taken care of the mess he was landed in as he stuck his head out of the water and past the curtain to yell, "Hang on!"

He grumbled as the knocking started again and assumed he hadn't been heard, and was about to curse them for stupidity before he realized that there wasn't anyone coming to his house at this time of night without needing something. His mother, he thought, needed something. Explanations, and Danny hurried to turn the water off and drag a towel around his hips as he squished his way out of the bathroom, through his bedroom, and down the hall. He could only be grateful that he'd sealed the wood well as he saw the puddles where he'd stepped, but turned his attention to the door and the locks.

The chain pulled, the deadbolt turned, and he opened the door to—

"Sam?" he asked as an eyebrow quirked up in surprise. "What are you doing here?"

She almost laughed at the surprised look on his face, but settled for turning red as she took in the way his hair was plastered to his head with water and the fact that he was wearing nothing but a towel. "I thought you might want to talk," she said as she closed her eyes and shook her head. "I interrupted your shower. I can come back in the morning. Or not, if you'd rather," she offered, eyes still closed.

"No, no, it's fine," he said in a hurry. He stepped back, holding the door open with one hand and keeping the towel firmly in place with the other. "You can come in, I'll go get dressed. I was done anyway," he explained as Sam's eyes opened and she stepped carefully over the puddle he'd left on the floor in front of the door.

"You do that," she said, and Danny bit back a smile as he closed the door, making sure the chain was back on, and headed back to his room to dress.

When he emerged in almost new jeans, a new towel slung around his neck he found Sam scuffing a towel she'd gotten from the kitchen across the last of the water on the floor with her foot. Her boots were carefully laced and sitting next to the door and Danny couldn't stop the laugh that bubbled up in his throat at the oddly striped socks she had on. She looked up at him, startled, and then smiled as she glanced back down and wiggled her toes. "Ha, ha," she said as she stooped to pick up the towel, tossing it at his head.

He caught it on reflex and shrugged. "You're the one wearing them," he said with an amused smile. "Thirsty?"

She shook her head but followed him into the kitchen. The towel he dropped into the sink, and he opened the fridge to grab a can of soda out before changing his mind and pushing the cans aside to reach for a bottle at the back.

"You drink?" she asked, and he looked away. It seemed that Sam would never approve of him and alcohol, but he _was _an adult.

He closed the fridge and carefully twisted the lid off of the bottle of beer. "Not often, just when I'm worked up," he said as he waved a hand in front of him. She shooed in the direction of the living room and he followed, settling into one of the chairs as Sam draped herself on the couch with a mild frown. "Tonight," he said in a tone that brooked no argument, "I'm worked up."

She only shrugged and glanced his way with a questioning look. "So how'd you get the beer, anyway? According to your license, you're only twenty."

Danny smirked. "Do I _look_ twenty?" At her unwilling headshake Danny smiled widely. "Exactly. They didn't card me."

"Ah," was all she said.

"So why did you come again?" he asked after sipping at the beer for a few moments in a peaceable silence.

Sam wiggled around on the couch so that she could look at him. "I thought you might want to talk, is all, and Tucker is a little busy with Valerie."

"So him and Val, huh?" Sam shrugged and Danny mimicked it.

"Or maybe you want to blame me," she added after a moment.

"Now why would I want to do that?" Danny asked as he sat up straight in his chair, the remaining half of his beer forgotten as he focused on the obviously unhappy girl—woman—before him. How could he have missed it when he opened the door? The way her eyes were dark and worried, and the way she kept trying to avoid looking at him even as she did. And here Danny had thought it was only because he'd been naked. _Mostly naked_, he amended, but still.

"We both know I'm the reason your secret isn't a secret anymore," she mumbled.

"Sam," he started and stopped. With a sigh he picked the drink back up and drank the remainder in three long swallows, hoping that the almost pleasant numbness he drank it for would begin soon, or else he might not be responsible for the way his ghost powers reacted to the stress he was under. "It would have happened eventually," he probably said as he sat the now empty bottle down and wiped a hand over his face. "Probably sooner rather than later, too," he admitted with some reluctance. "It's not exactly a situation where everything is going to happen perfectly. People are going to get hurt, already have been hurt. Secrets wouldn't have lasted very long."

Sam turned the words over in her mind for a little while, content to let the silence stretch between them as she considered it all. He was right, of course, though she couldn't decide if it was from recent experience that he said it, or some sage piece of knowledge that Clockwork had bequeathed him. Considering how reluctant he'd been about divulging the secret of where he'd been, Sam was willing to wager it was the recent experience. Maybe very recent, as her mind turned to the epiphany she'd had only that afternoon when Danny had nearly freaked over the thought of her being hurt. She didn't realize how lucky she was, she'd never seen the potential of the crashing rocks that Danny had protected her from. But the sheer desperation had made her realize that he'd had to stand by while someone he loved died when he could have stopped it.

The only logical conclusion was his wife, and when he'd admitted it she thought she'd die. So loyal to his wife's memory that saving his best friend was driven from the desperation of having already lost her. It hurt her to think of it, hurt even worse to wonder who he'd been married to for eight years. There were dozens of possibilities, even outside of her expectations. She knew him well enough to feel positive that it wouldn't be anyone that he met while he was college, and it couldn't have been on the job since he'd said school then work, and he'd been married at twenty. It only made sense that it was someone he'd already known before making it into college, which meant someone in the high school crowd.

That realization brought her to a very unique state that was more than a little disturbing; an almost violent mingling of disgust and envy. A painful state, Sam realized as she unclenched the fists her hands had curled themselves in to while she contemplated who, possibly, might be Danny's now nonexistent wife. There were few possibilities that really engraved themselves in her mind. In fact, there were only two.

"Why didn't you tell us about your wife?" she asked, breaking the silence just as Danny was beginning to let his eyes close and slip into a light doze.

He jerked upright, his eyes wide and startled before he realized that she was smirking at him superiorly. He frowned and stuck his tongue out at her, knowing that he was too old for such childish behavior but not being able to help himself. "I told you guys that I wasn't telling you. I said I wasn't naming names and that it was private."

"I remember," she said sarcastically. She continued, much softer, "I meant about Vlad killing her, too."

He went so still that Sam caught herself staring at his bare chest to try and count the breaths to make sure he was still alive. She watched it rise and fall once, twice, and then raised her eyes back up to his. It broke her heart to see the vivid agony shining through his eyes, the blue darkening with the pain. His jaw was clenched and she was almost relieved that he wasn't holding the beer bottle anymore. The way his hands were clenched, white knuckled around each other, might very well have broken it, and then she'd probably have to force him somewhere for stitches.

What hurt even more was that she wanted to take that hurt away from him, to soothe it until it was gone and forgotten. It wasn't meant to be, but the words slipped out before she could stop them. "Danny, do you think that we could ever have…?"

He hitched in a breath and Sam paled as she realized what she'd done. Without thinking she sat up and pulled herself to her feet in the blink of an eye. "God, I'm sorry, Danny. It's late, we're both tired. I'll go home."

She was nearly in a blind panic as she grabbed her boots and struggled frantically against gravity as she tried to pull them on one at a time while she stood next to his front door. She heard when he got up and followed her, but she hoped it was only to make sure the door was locked behind her. The last thing that she wanted or needed was for Danny to try and make her feel better about the stupid crush she'd had for years. Better that he think it only a crush, because she was more sure than ever that she was at least half in love with him, if not more. 

"Sam," he said softly, and she shook her head and pulled away from the hand that reached for her.

"I'm sorry, Danny. About what I said, I'm sorry, okay?" She closed her eyes and swallowed once. "I know you loved your wife, you still love her. Anyone can see that. And I'm sorry about what happened to her."

"You're sorry," Danny said in a strangled voice, "about what happened to her?"

Sam nodded, still trying to jam her foot into the barely unlaced boot. "Yes, I am. I hope she didn't suffer."

"Her?"

Sam nearly rolled her eyes. She knew she was missing something, and for the life of her she couldn't imagine Danny getting completely and stupidly drunk off of one beer. "Your wife. Paulina?" she guessed.

Danny laughed outright at this. "Sam, I didn't marry Paulina. I could _never_ marry Paulina."

Sam's face flushed red at his almost condescending tone, and she gave up with the boot, just wrapping the laces to both around her hand as she unlocked the deadbolt. "Fine, Valerie, then." He chuckled again as she wrapped her hand around the doorknob and turned it, pulling the door open. At least as far as the chain would let her. She let out a frustrated noise, nearly in tears at the thought of being stuck with this strange Danny a moment longer.

Then his hand slid past hers to push against the door until it closed, and she felt his other hand on her waist. "Sam," he said very low behind her. "I didn't marry Val, either. I do have a stronger sense of self-preservation than that, and I was never in love with her."

She didn't say anything, and the hand on the door slid down to her arm, and then up to her shoulder to force her to turn around and face him. She kept her eyes closed and down, knowing that the lashes were wet but priding herself that she hadn't done anything more obvious than that. His hand cupped her cheek and when she tried to pull back she found herself cornered by the door, the hard unforgiving wood pressing against her and giving her no escape. Then his thumb brushed across her lips, and Sam's eyes flashed open, the boots falling from suddenly nerveless fingers.

"Sam," he said, and she shook her head again, not even able to think about what was happening as she closed her eyes again. Anything instead of seeing those earnest blue eyes. "Sam, look at me," he ordered. She refused, and his tone turned pleading. "_Look at me._ Sam, I married you."

Then his mouth was on hers and Sam couldn't think at all as instinct and years of desire took over, and Danny took full advantage of the way she was suddenly pressing her body against his. It was so familiar and so different all at once. He had to fight the memories as they tried to swell up, years worth of love and lovemaking between him and a Sam who was frighteningly similar to this woman now in his arms, whose head was tilted back just so to bare her throat to his lips and teeth, arms wound around his neck and breasts flush with his bare skin.

"Sam," he groaned, and she looked up at him with dazed violet eyes as he pressed another desperate kiss to her lips.

She kissed him back without thought before murmuring, "I'm right here, Danny. I've always been right here," against his lips.

And there it was, the realization that even if the woman he'd married wasn't _his_ Sam, that one thing was one of the constants between this world and that. That she had been waiting for him, that she had always been his. He lifted her up and half carried her, half stumbled with her, back to the bedroom, her hands firm on his shoulders as she kept his mouth too busy to ask permission. If she hadn't wanted to go she would have let him know, Danny knew that much. That was just one thing that he was sure never changed in this woman, even after he'd disappeared and returned. When she wanted something she almost always went after it, and when she didn't, she said so, and always to your face. And considering what she was doing to his face, Danny was certain that he hadn't misread her.

He let her legs down once they were safely in his room, and he pulled his mouth away from hers so that he could taste her throat, the smooth skin over her collarbone. The whimper that rose in her throat as his mouth skimmed made his hands tighten at her waist, pushing up the thin dark fabric of her shirt as he dropped to his knees and pressed his mouth to her stomach, eyes arrowed up searching for any sign of her wanting to stop. She was hesitant, but she never made a move to halt his hands as the slid down the length of her legs and pushed at the fantastically striped socks. His eyes were still on hers as he pulled first on, then the other off before making his way back up to her mouth.

It was in the moment that the backs of her knees hit the bed and she lost her balance, falling back onto the mattress, that Danny understood why it was so familiar, and yet so unfamiliar at the same time. The startled look in her eyes where he might once have expected a predatory and inviting look cemented it, and as he lowered himself to the bed with her, Danny wondered what the odds were of him being her first lover in both lifetimes. He kissed her again, gently, and then lifted his head to look down at her with a searching gaze.

All he found was lust and love in her eyes, and he kissed her again.


	14. Chapter 13

There and Back Again

13

He was gone when she woke, her body sore and Sam winced as she sat up, places twinging and aching and one place on her shoulder feeling completely numb from the position she'd been sleeping in. She looked around and everything looked almost exactly the way she had seen it last night through the blur of dark and skin and heated gazes. She slid out of the bed and pulled the sheet with her as she headed out of the master bedroom, looking for him. "Danny?" Sam called down the hall, but there was no answer. When she reached the kitchen she saw a carton of orange juice on the counter, still cool to the touch but far from as chill as it should have been.

There was a glass too, still clean, and what looked like the beginnings of breakfast, all left undisturbed. With a frown her eyes lit on the answering machine. She pressed the button and the frown grew as Valerie's voice came blaring out. She waited just long enough to hear Valerie say Danny's name and then stopped the recording before it could play anymore, turning on her heel and stalking back down the hall to retrieve her clothes.

Her panties were in a shapeless wad on his dresser, her skirt hung from one of the closet's doorknobs. Her bra and her shirt were lost causes; the rips in the black cotton and the snapped strap couldn't be used in polite company now. she all but growled in annoyance as she wrenched open his closet door and snatched out one of the many shirts he had hanging there, slipping it on and buttoning it down the front. The sleeves were shoved up, then rolled messily as she hunted her socks from where they were under the foot of the bed, and then her boots, which Sam remembered to be still left where she'd dropped them at the front door when he'd stopped her from leaving.

She wished she had left as she found them and tugged them on. It was so much easier when she was sharp with anger, instead of embarrassed or jealous. She didn't even try to lock the door as she slammed it behind her and headed for her car, and then for the Fenton's. if there was anyplace to find him, that would be it, because no matter what had happened or been said, she'd seen the worry and fear on his face about talking to his parents.

She was in such a hurry that she never saw the small slip of paper fluttering from beneath the edge of the blanket she had shoved off of her when she first woke up. If she had seen it, she would have seen Danny's sloppy scrawl, and maybe even have smiled as she read it.

_Ghost at home. Will be back. Don't leave. I love you._

---

If there was one thing Danny was used to, it was being woken up at odd hours to do battle with ghosts. It didn't seem to matter where he was or what timeline he was in, the ghosts just seemed to attack at the worst possible times. This morning was an excellent example of that, seeing as how Danny was roused by the phone ringing and dragged from a warm bed and the soft body of Sam to answer it. He hadn't been completely awake when his mother's frantic voice ordered him home, saying something about ghosts boiling out of the portal in the basement and that they were all too pressed back to hit the DNA lock.

He'd been there for nearly an hour and hadn't managed to get any closer to it than his mother had, though he wasn't offering to use everything in his arsenal that was available to him. That was one part of the plan that he couldn't compromise; Danny knew he would need every edge on Vlad that he could get, and keeping all of his powers and abilities away from Vlad's prying eyes would give him the only edges that he could get.

Jack and Jazz had both tried to help as much as they could, but there was only so much that the two could accomplish with their injuries. Jack was trapped on the stairs, Maddie had been guarding him fiercely. He was much more vulnerable than Jazz was, she at least was mobile. Jazz had taken refuge beneath the stairs, though her refuge certainly wasn't without its own dangers. It seemed that anytime she managed to get a decent shot lined up that some ghost would simply throw something at the staircase and make the things tucked away beneath it rattle and try to fall over on her.

"Mom, twelve o'clock high," Danny called from where he was wrestling with two ghosts, his hands glowing with ectoenergy that seemed to sear their ectoplasm. They bared their teeth in grimacing snarls bit refused to let go of him, even when he flared his power more brightly.

He heard his mother's bo staff make contact with the gray-green ghost that had been headed towards her and Jack both, took a moment to glance down at its painful howl. This ghost didn't seem to have the stamina that the two he was fighting did; it turned tail and headed straight back through the swirling portal and into the Ghost Zone. With a grunt of effort Danny threw one of the ghosts, frowning when it turned itself intangible to slide through the wall of the lab as he grabbed the other by the scruff of its ectoplasm.

This one, too, was thrown, but he was able to aim it at the portal and send it back without too much of a problem. Another quick glance showed his mother engaged in combat with something that looked like a beaver with wings, and Jazz was taking careful shots at an overgrown and glowing mosquito. The rest of the lab seemed relatively empty and he aimed down, blurring himself in an effort to reach the DNA lock. A moment before he was able to slam his gloved hand on it he let go of his ghost half, but the contact between Fenton hand and lock never came as, for the fourth time since he'd started the battle, more ghosts flooded out of the portal to launch themselves at him and drive him into a wall.

Light flared again and Danny sank back into it with a frustrated growl. He'd tried everything he could think of; teleportation, intangibility, invisibility, frontal assaults and deception. Not a one of them got him to where he could trigger the DNA lock, and not for the first time he wondered how much this overrunning of ghosts had to do with Vlad and how little with the fact that the Fenton portal was in the Fenton basement.

More than he wanted to admit, Danny was sure as he reappeared in the basement, flying up through the floor to take out two ghosts who were harassing his mother and father. The two were quickly replaced, and Danny shot a handful of ectoblasts into them before dive-bombing another ghost as it came at Jazz while she was aiming up to help Danny. The portal was being overrun, and Danny was forced to consider using some of the other tricks up his sleeve, no matter that he might reveal more of his arsenal to Vlad in order to save his family, but salvation came in the form of a very angry young woman wrapped into one of his own shirts.

Sam was fair glowing with the fury as she squeezed off a flurry of shots into the fray, each one hitting, if not taking out, another ghost. Those too were replaced, but Sam came tromping down the stairs, much lighter in her boots than anyone had a right to be as Danny's eyes widened in worry as she took a flying leap over his father and slipped past his mother with a quick toss of an extra power pack to her. The click and clatter as his mother dropped the dying pack and slammed the new one with a full charge home was lost in the roar he gave as Sam found her way to the floor, amethyst eyes narrowed and brilliant.

"Dammit, Sam, I asked you to stay there!" The angry accusation was the first thing that crossed his lips, and Danny drove a fist into a through one ghost as it started to fly towards Sam.

An ectoblast from Sam's gun zipped past his head, close enough to singe hair, and Sam gave him a sarcastically pissed smile. "Actually, Danny, you left me to wake up alone." Another shot was fired, this time into the middle of the portal where another ghost was aiming to emerge, and Sam took a small shot at Danny to singe more than his hair as it scraped across his hazmat and skin with a hissing whine. "How dare you!" she yelled at him as she started firing at more ghosts who were slipping past Danny as his eyes shot to her, startled.

"What do you mean?" he asked as he reached out and grabbed a ghost heading past him to the ground. A stomp of his boot and a hard kick sent it back through the portal, and Danny ground his teeth at Sam.

"What I mean," she all but screeched at him as she shot another ghost point blank and pushed a second into one of Jazz's shots, heading straight for Danny to poke one finger into his chest, "is that you have no right to come here and try to use me to replace your wife. If that's all you wanted, I'd've skipped sleeping with you and been fine waking up alone!"

"If I what?" Danny yelped, his concentration completely gone and his breath following it as he was dogpiled by several more ghosts come to join the fray.

Seemingly unconcerned Sam turned and started picking off ghosts where they were trying to corner Jazz—Maddie was holding her own with Jack as backup, even with the shock of what she'd heard. "Come on," Sam ordered as she held a hand out to Jazz and pulled her out of the storage space and dragged her around to the front of the stairs.

"You and Danny?" Jazz managed to get out as Sam gave her a push up towards her mother, refusing to answer the question.

From behind her there was a blaze of green and white light brilliant enough to make the rest of the Fenton's shield their eyes against is. Sam only waited for the light to die down a bit before she turned to find Danny panting and standing in the middle of the suddenly near-empty lab. The handful of ghosts that hadn't been blasted away to god only knew where were floating randomly around trying to regain their senses. They never got the chances as Sam started firing on them, and then scooped up one of Jack's new and improved Fenton Anti-Creep Sticks to slam it into the side of a ghost.

The new anti-ectoplasm shielding worked like a charm and the ghost sparked, slumped, and melted where it stood. It was rather nauseating, even if Sam knew that Danny could never melt like that by virtue of his human DNA being attached to everything that was part ghost, but it was still really gross.

"Danny, the lock," she cried as she saw another ghost, but hopefully no more, rallying on the other side of the portal.

In the almost deserted lab, Sam watched as Danny flickered for a moment and then disappeared into a shadow where he'd stood only moments before. A second later he was reemerging from that Sam shadow a pace in front of the main computer banks, the DNA lock just under his hand as he shifted back to human and pressed his hand down on it, wincing as it drew blood unexpectedly from a sharp edge. But the heavy whir and clamping of the portal's door closing and locking was a welcome change and worth the few drops of blood he'd been clumsy enough to spill.

That done he turned to find Sam poking at a pile of ectoplasm in front of the portal. His anger reared up once again.

"Now what the hell were you doing, Sam?" he demanded.

She glanced back over her shoulder at him, glaring darkly. "You could have woke me up, Danny. I don't like having to wake up to Val on your answering machine and you nowhere to be found."

Danny's anger began to wilt. "I don't know about the answering machine, Sam. I haven't checked that thing in three days. But I left you a note. It was on the bed."

Sam snorted. "That doesn't change what's happening, Danny."

"What, exactly, is that?"

"I'm not going to just be a replacement, Danny," she instructed him, eyes darkly violet as they stared into his bright blue.

Much to her annoyance Danny let out a bark of laughter. "You think that you're a replacement? That I'm looking for you to be my 'new' wife just because I was married to _her_ for eight years?"

Sam never got the chance to answer as the portal's doors slid open suddenly, unexpectedly, and with just as much swiftness as Danny had always hated about them. One moment her mouth was open to sent a sharp retort his way, the next a long green tentacle was slipping through the swirling vortex of the portal and pulling Sam back into it as she screamed his name. Then she was gone, and the lab was left in dead silence as the doors halted in the full open positional.

A breath later Danny was darting after her, his heart hammering in his chest as he realized that he was losing her all over again, this time so much worse because there was no surety that this wasn't real, that this was just somewhen else to make himself stronger, smarter, a better fighter so that he could save the real timeline. The real Sam.

"Oh god," he whispered as he emerged on the other side deep in the greens and purples that made the Ghost Zone. She wasn't there, nowhere in sight, and Danny's heart gave a startled lurch as he realized the he couldn't find her. On instinct he headed forward and right, towards the castle he'd spent so much time at in the last eleven years.

When he got there it was empty. Even the ticking seemed duller and less alive than it should have, and Danny only wasted a few moments looking around before realizing that no matter where he tried, Clockwork wouldn't be there. Whether by accident or design… It was design. He knew it, the Time Master was never away from his castle unless need be, and if he was gone that meant that this was a sticking point in the timeline. That he'd already changed as much as he could, and no matter what happened, no matter the consequences of any action, they were here to stay.

Which meant that if he lost Sam, if he let her die again… Then she'd be gone forever.

He gave an anguished cry, calling her name so that it echoed on the fringes of one of his wails out and across the depths of the Ghost Zone before turning back towards where his family's portal was.

---

"He'll be back," Jazz said as he brother disappeared through the portal, stalling her mother as she moved to close it again. "You can't close it on him. We can hold it if we have to."

Maddie shook her head. "Jazz, we can't hold it if they come back again like they were."

Jazz gave her mother a hollow laugh. "They won't, Mom. They have Sam. They don't need any of us now."

There was a thump as Jack's cast hit one of the steps on the staircase, but he barely winced as he made it down another step, and then another until he was in the lab proper. "You know what they were fighting about, Jazzie-pants?" he asked as he thumped up behind her heavily.

"Dad, sit down," Jazz said, not answering the question as she saw the fine sheen of sweat on her father's forehead. She grabbed one of the chairs her parents kept in the lab and wheeled it over to him, wincing as the stitches in her shoulder pulled a little. A hand to the padded wound made her wonder if it was bleeding again, but she thought that it would probably hurt worse, sting at least, if she'd actually done herself any real damage.

Her mother laid a hand on the shoulder that wasn't hurt, and said, "Jazz."

Jazz closed her eyes and lowered her head. "Yes," she answered. "Mostly. I think."

Jack and Maddie both arched eyebrows at her, but didn't ask about the convoluted assurance. Instead they simply asked. "What did he mean, eight years?" Jack asked as Maddie questioned, "When did he and Sam become an item?"

Jazz held her hands up in self defense. "It's complicated. Really, really complicated. And we're going to need help if we're going to make sure Sam and Danny are okay, alright? Mom, you call Val while I message Tuck."

She couldn't understand how, but Jazz managed to forestall her parents with that, just knowing that no matter what was going on, even if Danny brought Sam back safe and sound and in one piece, that they'd still need the help. No matter what had happened between Valerie and Danny, she knew that the woman wouldn't let Sam suffer, or even Danny, if it meant that it compromised her own ethics when it came to host hunting and the safety of the townspeople, and the safety of her team. And Valerie had been working with Sam and Tucker both for too long to ever think of them as less than teammates.

By the time Tucker got there Jazz was trying to explain to Valerie and her parents both about the paradox of Danny and the alternate timeline. Some details she left out, such as the fact that he knew they were all going to die before he went. Better for them to assume that he was the bereaved hero instead of the ruthless student. Jazz thought that her mother might understand, and Valerie too, but there was no way her father would. He was simply to kind hearted to ever think that anyone he knew and loved, especially his son, could ever let anyone be hurt (much less killed) when he could stop it.

But Tucker arrived and pulled out his perpetual PDA, running the connectors from it to the portal with a frown as he started inspecting the circuitry for weak points that would have allowed it to open without being signaled by the DNA lock. Maddie joined him soon after, Jazz's explanations short and almost cursory, and her outright refusal to comment on Danny and Sam and their relationship, if there was one. There was no way Maddie would have known that Jazz simply didn't know, but she didn't hold it against her daughter. She realized that sometimes people just needed things that were theirs, and she had wondered more than once when Danny was younger if he and Sam really were dating, and that they just wouldn't say anything because it was special.

Though the fact that Danny would get married to someone not Sam certainly sent that theory to a messy and painful death.

Maddie and Tucker were both frowning over the circuits and the electricity readouts when a pale and hollow looking Phantom emerged from the portal, his green eyes dark and empty and flaring unsteadily. The only noticed him when he floated towards them and shoved them out of the way with a gentleness that belied his outer emptiness. He considered the hulking machine for a moment, then reached inside of it with an expression that was like a pale version of a frown. When his hand came back out it held a tiny device that was beeping and flashing with a pink light.

"A remote control," Tucker murmured as he reached out for the device, turning it over in his hands before unhooking his PDA from the Fenton's computers and digging out a smaller connection that looked like it would fit the adapter at the end of the remote.

It didn't, but Tucker only gnawed at the wire for a moment before Valerie handed him a knife. With the cord sliced clean Tucker only needed to strip the last few millimeters of it before shoving it into the device's feed. And when he did, Danny could see it written on his face.

"Vlad," he said without hesitation or question. Tucker nodded and Danny bared his teeth, menacing in his ghost form.

"Can we find her?" Maddie asked, with Valerie's worried eyes seconding the question. Tucker nodded and bent to his task.

"And when we find her, I'll find Vlad," Danny added in a voice that allowed no argument. "It's time that he was dealt with." The anger in his voice was palpable, but it was as he expected it. Vlad had finally started it. His life for the last eleven years had finally come full circle.


	15. Chapter 14

There and Back Again

14

It hadn't taken Tucker very long to figure out the remote device that Vlad had placed inside the Fenton lab. To his, and everyone else's dismay, the only information that he was able to salvage off of it was how long it had been there, and that had been long enough. It had been there since well before Danny left for the alternate timeline, and he, Tucker and Jazz all agreed that it had probably been there since shortly after Vlad learned that Danny was a halfa like him. It certainly explained how Vlad had been able to show up randomly in the basement so many times when he was young. The only time they'd been able to explain to the Fenton's was right before Pariah Dark's invasion, but to do that they also had to explain Danny's barely controlled fury.

In all of Danny's planning an calculations he had never expected to have to tell his parents that Vlad Masters was the ghost responsible for all of this, that he had tried to kill Danny, had killed Danny in that other then, and that everything that Danny had been through in the last eleven years was rooted firmly in Vlad's hands.

It had hit his father hard as he realized the truth of Danny's words, though Maddie accepted it quickly and without any type of argument. Sometimes Danny wondered, as he did now, what kind of friend Vlad had been all of those years ago, what kind of person he'd been, to have gained his father's trust so thoroughly. Jack Fenton was a trusting man, there was no denying that, but the bond that he had with Vlad was something Danny had never been able to understand or even find a comparison. And the look on Jack's face when he realized that the cast on his leg, the dozens of stitches in his daughter's shoulder, were Vlad's fault…

It broke Danny's heart to see. To know that even with Vlad's level of responsibility, it was still his, too. If he'd just been a little smarter, a little faster, a litter stronger… just better, then his father would never have had to know that his best friend was a traitor who hated him and coveted his wife.

But once Jack had heard it all, processed it, understood it, he'd accepted it and joined forces firmly behind Danny. Between his father and Tucker, they were well on their way to trying to piece together a device that should let them track a real world object, a person, through the Ghost Zone.

There had been three trips to the edge of the Ghost Zone already with the cobbled together device, and each time they'd been forced to retreat as it picked up nothing. The first trip Danny had watched with eager eyes, waiting to see the blips that indicated a found item, a found Sam, but nothing had happened and amidst the arguments about boosting signal versus refining the search parameters Danny had only floated them all back into the lab. The second time he followed them in, their safety net should they drift, he didn't pay as much attention to him. Instead he found his attention drawn, tugged on faintly by his ghost half. Whatever it was trying to tell him he couldn't understand it, but he stayed in the Ghost Zone for a few moments after he'd shoved his father and friend both back into the lab.

The third time he ignored them completely and focused on nothing but the ectoplasm that ran through his veins, that was bonded to every single cell in his body at the atomic level. There was a tingle there, the sensation of bridled power, the way he felt every time a ghost revealed itself to him in his ghost sense, and Danny breathed out a long slow breath as he tried to draw it up I him. His concentration narrowed more, and he closed his eyes. And there it was, flashing behind them in fantastic patterns he could see his own life force, the ectoplasm and energy that allowed him to live and die at the same time, and somehow he knew exactly what his ghost was trying to tell him.

This time when he removed them back to the lab he listened for a scant moment as Jack and Tucker discussed power boosting options, with Maddie joining in as Jazz watched with tired, worried eyes. Then he snatched the tracked from Tucker's hands and dropped it with a loud clang onto one of the desks, a last minute change from the place he really wanted to put it. But the garbage was already full.

"This isn't going to work," Danny said. "If you can't do it yet, how are you ever going to find her in all of that?" and his hand gestured expansively at the unending void that was the Ghost Zone.

There was no answer for a moment, and then Tucker said, "It's the best chance we've got, unless you have an idea." Danny almost smirked, the smugness in his eyes coming across loud and clear as Tucker sighed. "Alright, spill it. What makes you so certain that you can find her now?"

Now Danny smiled smugly, his voice a cruel parody of what he normally sounded like. He knew it was because he was closer to his ghost than he usually was, but he didn't really care if it would take him to where he needed to be, and to Sam. "I'm a ghost," he informed Tucker. "And she doesn't belong in the Ghost Zone. Have no fear; I'll find her."

He didn't wait as he turned back to the Ghost Zone. He grabbed one of the Fenton Phones from the desk and took a step inside the portal to just float just at the edge of the Ghost Zone. It would take him a moment to call up the ectoplasm in his blood again, to coax it to tell him the secrets he wanted to know, and by the time he had that done they'd be in the Specter Speeder and ready to follow him. It worked exactly as he'd mentally predicted it and no sooner had they crept into the Ghost Zone, Danny was off like a shot in the dark, heading due south and down away from the portal. The trail was faint, but he could feel the distinct blurring of something that didn't belong that way. Very far that way, but still there, and he knew it could only be Sam since most ghosts never brought real world items into the Ghost Zone, especially with Walker as trigger happy about his rules as he was.

It was an effort of will to stay slow as he flew, but Danny didn't want to fly ahead. There was safety in numbers, and if he wasn't worried about himself, he certainly didn't want to leave anyone following him to the non-existent mercy of the ghosts that were thinking twice as they saw the Phantom pacing the human contraption. Several times he started to pull away, and each time Danny fought against the instinct that made him want to fly for Sam, hell-bent and vengeful. He knew he could far outstrip the Speeder—hell, Danny knew he could probably outstrip anything barring fighter jets—but that didn't mean it was the time to do so.

Instead, slow and steady was the pace he held. And even if the Speeder's top speed was well above anything in a normal land based vehicle, it was still achingly slow. The minutes seemed to stretch into hours, though Danny knew instinctively that they hadn't been in the Ghost Zone for as long as it felt, as he followed the silent urgings of his ghost, closer and closer to what he desperately wanted to be Sam. The course was corrected several times, but none of them more than minor changes in heading as he got closer and was able to feel the minute changes to the east or west. Nothing changed at all from that until he made a minor detour around a floating island that reminded him of Skulker's, only devoid of the jungle Skulker had cultivated.

He dove beneath it, skimmed along the underside as the Speeder powered along a meter lower than him. Tucker was at the wheel and Danny knew that he could fly closer without worry; he assumed that Tucker was trying to fly 'safely' for his parents' sake. And possibly Jazz's. But the thought slipped clean out of his mind as he passed the island and brought himself back up in the air to level with his previous flight path—and realized that whatever it was he'd been following wasn't in front of him anymore. No, it was behind him, and Danny skidded to a stop mid-air, turning back to the island.

He'd forgotten in the sheer bewilderment that he'd passed it—her—that the Specter Speeder had been following him. Closely, most times, and this was no different. Danny's eyes went wide and on instinct he raised his arms as if to ward off the impact as he saw the horror on his parents' faces. It was the less than worried looks on Tucker's and Jazz's faces that kept him from slipping out of place to reappear behind them. Instead he willed himself intangible, the tingling moving through his body one cell at a time just heartbeats before the Speeder slammed through the place where he'd just been. Where he still was, really, and he almost chuckled at the gasps as he slipped through everyone in the speeder as they drove right through his body.

It was a strange feeling, he knew it from firsthand experience. Even being half ghost didn't make him invulnerable to the very human shivers as a ghost passed through his human form, though it only tickled faintly when a ghost passed through his ghost half. And it was entirely too amusing to hear the angry shout his shout his sister sent his way as Tucker fired the boosters to bring the Speeder to, if not a halt, certainly a sharp turn that sent them back his way at a crawl. Danny waggled his fingers at her with a flippant grin, and then laid a finger to his ear to turn the Fenton Phones on.

"We passed it," he said into it even as he spun in the air again and started towards the island. "I think we went under it—if we'd gone over it we probably would have seen Sam. Or at least seen something."

The rockets fired and Danny knew that Tucker would follow behind as he finally let go of the patience and self control he'd been exerting. He was a blur of shadow as he moved, and the barren place he landed was dusty beneath his feet when he landed. The Speeder was still heading towards him, but Danny didn't wait for them to land. Instead he cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, "Sam!"

Then he stood silent and still as he listened for a response. There wasn't one, and his heart clenched as he wondered if he'd messed up, if she wasn't here at all. Or worse, if she was here… But dead. He dismissed that thought out of hand; it didn't ring true. If Sam were dead she'd still be there. Whether or not Danny wanted to admit it, she had unfinished business, and she'd hang around at least long enough to resolve what was between them. Beyond that, she had a very finely tuned and well honed sense of revenge, which guaranteed she'd stay and wait for him to come for, if only to take it out on whoever had killed her. And there was no other ghost present, his ghost sense made sure of that.

Maybe he could get his ghost sense to home in on her again, if he concentrated and actually focused on it. All of his focus had disappeared completely when he realized he'd passed her. Danny closed his eyes and looked inward, waiting for his ectoplasm to tell him which way to go, which way he would find her. He heard the Specter Speeder touch down, but he was able to tune it out as he felt the faint stirrings of his ghost half reaching out and searching as he'd asked it. _In front of him._ Danny's eyes flashed open, suddenly startling blue before a blink sent them back to the blazing neon green he was accustomed to in his ghost form.

"Sam," he breathed and took off into the trees in front of him.

She wasn't far, and she wasn't unconscious. She was tied, bound and gagged so that when she tried to answer his call she couldn't have, and never would have been able to simply come to him. Her eyes were wide as he untied her, and he heard the crashing of his family in the underbrush behind him as the gag was carefully tugged down so that it draped around her throat.

"Are you okay, Sam?" he asked, voice hollow and desperate with worry. His hands moved frantically down and across her shoulders as his eyes searched for any sign of injury. Her pale skin was as clear and perfect as it had been the night before, there was no blood, there were no bruises, and Danny's fear began to slip away as he realized that she wasn't dying, or even close.

She nodded her head even as she leaned into him, her eyes unsurprised as Tucker and Jazz quickly came upon the scene. She only wrapped her arms around Danny's face as breathed in the safety that was his arms holding her, closing her eyes for the moment. "Sam," he said softly, and she opened her eyes again to catch a momentary glimpse of his parents and a first aid kit before his hands on her cheeks were forcing her to look him in the eye.

"Sam," he said again, "I'm not trying to replace her. I was never trying to do that. I was trying to replace you with her." His breath hitched and she saw how perilously close to tears he was. "I only wanted _my_ Sam, damn it, and there _is_ a difference. _My_ Sam likes strawberry milkshakes, and she still wears her boots on the weekends, and she sure as hell _never_ said no to someone in need," he insisted.

She gave him a shaky smile and Danny raised one hand to push some of her hair out of her face. "And sometimes," he said softly, "_my_ Sam makes the mistake of thinking that I don't love her, and she's wrong. Sam, I love you. I've always loved you, and I'm not going to lose you because of something as silly as this."

It wasn't impatience this time that drove Danny to act without waiting, instead it was the sheer need to show her how much he cared. Even if he couldn't just tell her that everything he'd done had been for the people he loved, for his friends and family and for her, and damn anyone else he was caught in the crossfire, he could at least try and show her that no matter what, his heart was hers. It was careful and careless at the same time, gentle and undemanding and everything that he wanted to give her lay inside that kiss. And for a moment Danny couldn't help the fear that was inside of him, the piece of him that was absolutely terrified that she wouldn't understand, would refuse what he offered, what he gave, even knowing that he wanted nothing in return but simple love. Then her still lips warmed and moved and it was gone, withered to nothing, giving Danny the momentary belief that there was nothing in the world that could ever be wrong again.

He was wrong, he knew he was, but he couldn't bear to stop kissing her just because he would have to finish the mission that he'd accepted eleven years ago, and it was with more regret than he could say that he drew back, his lips lingering for only a bare moment longer before he rested his forehead against hers, his eyes closed. "When this is over, Sam, I'll tell you everything you want to know. Just wait for me until then, okay?"

He felt her nod her head again, and her voice was hoarse from the gag that had been forced into her mouth when she answered. "If I waited for you since we were in high school, I don't think a little more time is going to make a difference. But it's coming back, Danny. The ghost that took me is coming back—" Her voice stumbled for a moment but she picked up the thread of thought strongly.

"He left me here, said he had to go to Vlad," and the proof positive in her eyes that knowing this was so painful, "to get something to keep my ghost in."

Despite the rage that was simmering underneath his skin, Danny arched an eyebrow at her. "And what ever gave the ghost the idea that you'd become one, too?" he asked, his tone a little sardonic.

She gave him a small smile. "I might have threatened to haunt him," she muttered. "Or something like that."

He chuckled and drew her with him back to everyone else where they still stood in behind them. "The ghost is coming back," he said, knowing that it was a little redundant to say it but feeling the need to savor the words. The ghost's return would give him a chance to wreak some very satisfying revenge for taking Sam and scaring her the way he did, and for making Danny ever fear for her, even if it was short lived. "When he comes back, I plan on taking care of him and sending a message to every single ghost in the Ghost Zone at the same time."

His mother was silent and considering, and neither Sam, nor Tucker, nor Jazz asked what the message was. His father, however, was still too gentle by nature to ever understand what Danny had so tactfully tried to say, and asked. "What message, Danny-boy?"

Danny's eyes flared green for a moment, and then he smiled, a wicked and cruel curving of his mouth that made it fierce instead of friendly. "That anyone who touches my family pays forfeit with their afterlife."

---

Between the time it took for Sam's captor to leave her and return, Danny had plenty of time to rest and regain any of the strength he'd lost in the search for her. It hadn't been much, a negligible amount, but it had been a welcome chance to spend in relative peace with her, and with everyone else. There were no uncomfortable questions, though he could see the words fair written on their faces. He could also see the understanding, and the knowledge there, too, and knew that no matter what had been or would be said and done, they understood what was between him and Sam. And that meant they also understood that she was to be protected from herself, because Danny knew that she would try to mix in the fray that was fast coming, and Sam would risk herself needlessly.

When the ghost returned the Specter Speeder was well hidden in the brush and debris to one side of the clearing it had initially landed in, and the completely human members of the search party were as well hidden as it. Danny had opted for obvious, since the subtle messages he'd sent out on his first return had so obviously been ignored. He was floating in the center of the clearing, all but lounging in the air as his eyes followed the ghost's flight towards him.

It saw him, he knew it did from the way it slowed ever so slightly. But it either had more power or more guts than he'd have given it credit for, knowing that it worked for Vlad. Of course, it may have been as simply as being exceptionally stupid. But even that thought seemed unworthy, because when he thought that he felt like he was badmouthing the Box Ghost, who, despite his low level intelligence, had never teamed up with Vlad. But still, with the way it flew straight to him, stupid did seem to fit.

Obviously it had never heard the legends of his temper and displays of misplaced aggression. He spared a moment on a pitying thought, knowing that it was about to get the finest example of both that he had ever given.

It was longer than it was wide or tall, humanoid but for the tentacles that trailed behind it where legs or a blurred tail should have been. It's skin was more gray than green or blue, but held a definite undertone of purple, and it's eyes were a weeping and pussy yellow that made Danny feel nauseous just by looking at them. The skin was thin looking, puffed and damp, and Danny wondered for a moment if this ghost had once been a person instead of a random manifestation. It would certainly fit; the signs were all there that this creature might have drowned in life and become this gory cross between squid and corpse sometime after death.

"Come on," he whispered, still forcing himself to appear relaxed, as if he hadn't a care in the world. He needn't have; the ghost made no alteration in its course. In fact, he was sure that it never knew that he wasn't alone, because it never slowed, merely flipped around and came at him with all six tentacles splayed out.

The impact it expected never came. Instead its tentacles spread out across a bright green shield that suddenly incased Danny inside of it as he stared out with death in his eyes when he saw the unmodified Fenton thermos it held in one hand. The audacity that it had, that _Vlad_ had, to think that his own parents' technology would be turned on him, would be used to trap Sam, made Danny seethe, the sphere of ectoenergy growing with each angry breath he took until it shattered outward, the pieces of it sharp and slicing into anything vulnerable on the ghost.

One of its tentacles was severed clean through, two other sliced so deeply down that Danny knew they would be useless without time to heal. He wouldn't give it that time, and while the ghost howled, hands clenched into fists and eyes blind and unseeing as the thermos dropped to the floating island, Danny darted forward and seized the two wounded appendages. Then he pulled, hard, and they came away with a wet rip and a spurt of inky dark ectoplasm. The screams this time were more frantic with pain, and he smiled thinly as he shot up again, hands glowing as he began tossing disk shaped ectoblasts at it. He didn't actually expect it to fight, it seemed far more likely that the ghost would give in, give up, possibly even turn tail and try to run (even if Danny had no inclination to let it go) away.

But fight it did, the remaining three tentacles glowing darkly before the energy pooled in the tips. It aimed at him with them, jerking them around in some type of complicated pattern that might have been an attempt at hypnosis. He almost laughed at its attempt. Maybe if he had been younger he might have fallen for it, but now anymore and especially not now. Instead it only served to make moving targets, and Danny remained silent as he continued throwing random shots at the ghost and carefully gauging the pattern it preferred to move in.

Two minutes, maybe three later, Danny had the pattern and while it was busy laying down the next set of ectoblasts at him he only powered up his energy and held it at his hands. Then its three shots were flying at him and Danny was streaking in between them in a dangerously graceful dance, his hands flashing out like green blades to sever and sear as he found each tentacle without error. There was screaming again, and this time it didn't stop until Danny clamped one still glowing hand around the ghost's neck and squeezed hard enough that no sound could pass.

"You're either very intelligent," he hissed, "or very foolish, to have sided with Plasmius and to have laid a hand on her."

The reply was lost in another ectoplasm searing burst of power, and the ghost could only hang there writhing from his hand.

"I warned you all, the message was sent and ignored. You'll forgive me if I feel no pity for you now," he said, voice silky and dark. "You can at least take heart in knowing that you are my new message, and that you will be heeded."

It didn't answer, didn't even try before Danny's hand squeezed again, this time into and through the ectoplasm of the ghost's neck. A second later the head was floating away from him, eyes wide and lolling, mouth hanging open as it drifted away to the northern reaches of the Ghost Zone. He tossed what remained of the body the opposite way, and methodically gathered each tentacle to send them hurtling every which way, fury and anger and hatred on his face.

When he dropped back down to the island they were all there watching him, and Danny could barely meet their eyes for fear of the disgust and recrimination he might find there. It wasn't until he felt a hand in his that he looked up to meet his family's eyes. There was nothing that he expected in any of them, even if it was in his own. There was love, understanding, resolve.

And Sam's… There was the acceptance that he needed, unconditionally from her knowing him now as a killer.

He swallowed, then closed his eyes for a moment as he took a deep breath and changed back to his human form. "He'll know before too long that it wasn't done," he said quietly, slowly into the silence. There were nods all around, and Danny nearly shivered at the words he was ready to say. "Then Vlad will be next, and it'll be done."

No one said a word as they followed him back to the Specter Speeder.


	16. Chapter 15

There and Back Again

15

Danny tried to convince everyone that it would be safer if they stayed beneath a ghost shield at Fenton Works, safer still if they close, locked and shut down the portal while he was gone. In the end he could only give way with ill grace as they overran his plans to go after Vlad alone and listen as various strategies were tossed around. Then he joined in and battle plans were laid out. He imagined that his mother looked at him a little differently at how calmly her son was planning murder, but he couldn't blame her. Thankfully his father was a bit more pragmatic than that, and the other three already knew everything that led to this point.

It was early, again, by the time Danny instructed everyone to bed. The assault would happen soon enough, it was planned for dusk, and they all needed rest. Especially him—he wouldn't willingly admit it to anyone but he was tired, mortally tired. Murder, it seemed, did not sit well with him, even if the victim was already dead. The portal was locked, the lab was shut down, and everyone climbed the stairs (though Jack tended to gimp a little more with his crutches) to find slumber.

His parents went to their room, and Jazz willingly fell into her own bed. Danny gave Tucker his and took the couch, Sam following along silently and ignoring the knowing looks sent both their ways by everyone else as they left. When it was dark and quiet Danny sank into the couch with a soft groan, and Sam beside him to curl against his side. It wasn't habit that made him wrap an arm around her, or even reflex. It was simply love, and the need to have her with him.

"Are you okay?" she whispered into the soft silence, knowing that he wasn't.

He pulled her a little closer before answering. "I know why I have to, and there's even something in me that wants to. But Sam, I'm not a murderer. I don't want to kill him."

"I know," was all she said as he buried his face against the crook of her shoulder and breathed.

---

It was a three pronged attack. Danny was the first, the only expected adversary, and he took to the field without hesitation. Vlad's ghost portal was easily found in the Ghost Zone; even if he hadn't already known where it was, he wouldn't have had difficulty finding it. He went through it in a roar of power, shattering Vlad's fanciful football covering and sending half of the things in the lab behind it into collapse or destruction with the waves of pure ectoenergy that rolled off of him.

"Vlad!" he roared, his hands clapping together over the top of his head to channel a blast through the ceiling.

It went, rubble beginning to fall but disintegrating in the aftermath of ectopower as the green pillar of energy continued unchecked until it crashed out of the castle and into the rosy evening sky. He didn't have to look for Vlad, he already knew where he was by virtue of being so tightly tuned to the man who had been his enemy through two lives, and he lifted himself up in the air until he was level with the ground floor and the library that hid the lab. Vlad was there, eyes pale and narrowed, but unsurprised.

"Ah, Daniel. So the prodigal son returns," he said in dulcet tones, his manner groomed and polished as only those who feel superior can be.

Danny's eyes flared, though he wasn't even close to as out of control as he wanted Vlad to believe. Daniel's job was to make Vlad feel stronger, more powerful. To hold back until he had the chance to take him out. _To kill him,_ Danny told himself, knowing that mincing words was beneath him at this point.

He was going to kill Vlad Masters, why pretend it was something else?

Danny threw a half-strength ectoblast at Vlad as they took to the air and wasn't surprised when a hastily erected shield deflected it easily. He had a feeling that even if he hadn't lowered the power behind it, Vlad would have weaseled out of imminent death anyhow. That was just the kind of person that Vlad was, and Danny had known it since he was fourteen and watched him try to destroy his father's image. Not that Jack Fenton had ever _had_ an image anywhere but his wife's eyes, but that was all that Vlad cared about.

Danny bared his teeth, letting his frustration show in his face as he darted towards Vlad. The older halfa only laughed at him as he shifted in a flash of black light. It hadn't been long since Danny had seen this creature, this monster, but he had to remind himself for a moment that this wasn't the very same one that had already slaughtered everyone in his family, everyone he loved. This was one who was only trying to. Who would succeed if Danny failed, and that wasn't an option anymore. He only just got them back—he wasn't about to lose them a second time.

When Vlad sent a magenta colored ectoblast his way, Danny was ready for it. He'd readied his shields at full strength, even if he couldn't go all out yet offensively, he'd been damned if he was going to take hits that he didn't have to. The split second decision was taken away from him as Danny was hit from behind. If he'd had the chance to frown he would have; he hadn't seen Vlad duplicate himself and hadn't been expecting the blow that came down across his shoulders. Danny dropped several feet before righting himself to find several low lever ghosts ready to gang up on him.

This was something he could recognize without hesitation, one of Vlad's old tried and true strategies. Throw enough enemies at Danny and eventually he would weaken, lose the vigor and quickly recovered strength his youth gave him, and make the surprisingly level playing field skew wildly in Vlad's favor. It was the side effect of Vlad's age and the twenty years he'd once had on Danny's grasp of his powers. But Danny wasn't a fourteen year old kid going up against Vlad anymore. He knew that there was no massive twenty year gap in their expertise; Danny had whiled away and narrowed it by eleven. The older man had barely five years on Danny, but Danny had one last advantage when it came to simple strategy.

His skills had been honed constantly against Vlad himself. Vlad had never had anyone who defied him and fought back until Danny came along, and somewhere along the line he'd fallen into the habit of thinking of Danny always as a child.

It was a mistake. A terrible, wonderful mistake that would have been so no matter what. It was now because the second prong of Danny's strategy was coming through Vlad's portal right now, the whine of the Specter Speeder's engines loud as it shot up through the convenient exit Danny had created for it when he first arrived.

He could all but hear Vlad's angry protests as he turned away from the minor level ghosts who were being shot at by his parents, and Danny could only smirk at Vlad as he held his hands together and thought of the cold and unending ice inside of him. He wrapped it around a pocket of ectoenergy and hurled it at Vlad with a cry, aiming not for Vlad himself, but the air above him. It was habit to Vlad to dodge not by ducking or sliding to the left or right, but by flipping himself up in the air so that he could taunt Danny from the self same spot that Danny had aimed at and missed him in.

It backfired this time and Vlad was hit solidly with the snowy sphere. It spread on impact and the ectoenergy inside broke out and bit into his clothes, burning his cape badly enough that Vlad had to tug it off with a rip at his throat. He frowned down at Danny from above.

"So, Little Badger. You've learned some new tricks," he said, but this time there was no superiority, there was no smug smile. There was only a hard considering look that made Danny twitch where he floated.

_Shit,_ he thought, realizing that he'd overplayed his hand with the telegraphed shot. It was pure instinct that made him fly straight for Vlad before he could do anything, and Danny tackled him midair, his arms slamming hard into Vlad's waist. He could feel the way he knocked the air out of Vlad, but didn't dare let himself think that he'd come up with the upper hand. He was lucky that he'd told himself to expect the very opposite, because Vlad's hand flashed out in a blur of black.

It took Danny a moment to realize that what he was trying to dodge wasn't a black gloved fist, but Vlad's favorite little toy, and Danny knew that he had no desire to be hit with the Plasmius Maximus, even with his parents flying point and keeping the rest of the ghosts off of him as he dealt with Vlad. But all the same, Danny had the terrible feeling that he wasn't quite going to make it out of the way. It would hurt, and he'd _be_ hurt. He wouldn't die from the fall, but it could cost him this first and best chance to stop Vlad once and for all, and Danny curse as tossed caution to the wind and bent the world around him in a blur of green and black and white.

Seconds later he was behind Vlad, hands out and grabbing Vlad by the shoulders even as the Plasmius Maximus was knocked out of his hand by a well placed shot sent up by the third and final prong of Danny's offense. Sam and Tucker were aiming up, Tucker with the Fenton lipstick and Sam with one of the modified ectoguns she carried on her patrols, both of them smiling fiercely as Vlad let out a choked cry when Danny yanked him back and slipped an arm around his neck to drag him into a headlock.

A wave of icy heat slid over Danny and then he had to close his eyes against the red light of Vlad's own ectoenergy. There was no more warning as three Vlad's grabbed Danny and yanked him back in turn. He found himself held, one Vlad at each arm and another one behind him, hands around his neck to hold him steady as the real Vlad righted himself in the air and cracked his head, first left, then right, with a positively unholy smile on his face. Fangs were bared as drew back a fist and threw the punch.

The blow hit Danny straight on and he felt blood welling in his mouth and spilling from the split lip Vlad had given him. Vlad smiled again, and this time Danny bared his teeth right back, his face a bloody visage in the seconds before he kicked out, eyes flashing green as his foot hit Vlad above the knee. There was a pop, then a scream as Vlad fell back in the air, hands wrapped around the damaged leg. Danny shifted back to human for a moment, the sudden weight of gravity pulling him down and out of the unstable copies' arms, and he quickly shifted back in time to find himself in the path of the Specter Speeder and a very familiar, very angry black dragon.

"Fenton Fisher!" he shouted as he dove to the side letting the Specter Speeder pass him, and then Eragon, before he reached out and yanked on the dragon's tail. No sooner had the dragon turned on him than Danny was hit from behind again.

This time when he turned he spotted the tool he'd requested falling beneath him, and a sheepish Tucker waving up at him. Then Danny was hit from behind again, by the dragon, and he turned himself intangible to let the dragon fly straight through him in a trick he'd used once before on Eragon. But instead of grabbing his tail again he sent a blast of icy power at him to freeze his wings so that the ghost couldn't fly properly. Danny found it highly ironic that the dragon ghost could only fly with his wings, but he wasn't about to point out to Eragon that as a _ghost_ he didn't need _wings_ to fly.

The board was usually stacked against him anyway, he needed all the help he could get.

Eragon went plummeting down, ice shearing from his wings as the air whipped past him furiously. He saw a fairly large sheet come up from the upper curves of his right wing, and Danny reached out to it with his ectoenergy, grabbing it and pulling it towards him. A swing in the air and the ice sheet was flying towards Vlad behind him, the wicked edge taking Vlad at the waist and making his dislocated knee snap forward in a gruesome out of sync line with the rest of his body. Then Vlad's reddish power lit along the entire length of the ice and it began bubbling along the top until it was water falling in the sky.

Danny's attention was pulled away from Vlad's display as he heard the crunching sound of Eragon smashing into and through one of the few undamaged parts of Vlad's castle. The hole didn't stay very long as the remaining stone gave and fell inward to pile on top of the dragon's black scales. It was an interesting contrast, the pale stone versus the midnight dark creature, but Danny was quickly turning away in favor of the battle that still raged.

A glance around confirmed that his parents were still holding their own. It didn't look like too many of the ghosts had expected to have to contend with the marksmanship that his mother displayed, and none of them, Danny included, would have every thought that Jack Fenton would acquit himself so well. Whatever had happened in the last three years that Danny had been missing in their time, he couldn't help but realize that one of Jack's obvious endeavors was to make himself a better ghost hunter. Most likely to try and find whatever ghost had taken Danny, and the irony of that thought was entirely too painful.

Jazz had teamed up with Tucker, they were laying steady fire down the gaping hole that Danny had left. He knew that they were working against reinforcements, and Danny found himself surprisingly grateful that he wasn't alone. He wouldn't have had it this easy if he had been, of that he was certain. And Sam… His heart sped up a little as he realized that he couldn't see her anywhere. A little more as he wondered if she'd been hurt or taken or—

Better not to think of that, and the admonition came only a moment before Danny realized that someone was taking out trouble spots from a concealed position. Sam, it had to be, and his heart gave a sigh of relief.

"Is that all you've got, Little Badger?"

Vlad sounded far too composed for a man who'd just had his knee violently dislocated, and Danny turned to find the other ghost floating behind him, his eyes glowing a dangerous red that his hands echoed. The way he bared his fangs at Danny made him think forcefully of someone who'd just sunk his teeth into bloody flesh, the way the red ectoplasm reflected and glistened on them, and Danny narrowed his eyes.

He drew himself up in the air and glared. "Not so little anymore, Vlad," Danny answered him. "You're not walking away this time; you have far too much to answer for."

Vlad smirked, a sneering twist of his lips and face. "Ah, now there is the Daniel Fenton I know. Trying to convince yourself, are you?" The way Danny's eyes went suddenly dark and empty made the older ghost hesitate where he floated.

A smile spread across Danny's face, and he knew that it was cruel and merciless as he thought about the eleven years he had endured, the deaths he'd been forced to allow to happen, the pain and suffering and loss each and every one of them had gone through—twice over, though Danny was the only one who could remember both lives. His power began to flare at his hands, brilliantly green and so very dangerous looking as he lifted himself up to match Vlad's height, his mind suddenly and completely focused on his enemy. The battle that raged below them was pushed back; he had faith in his friends and his family, they wouldn't let him down, they would survive. The possibility of anything else was nonexistent.

"No, Vlad," Danny said, his voice deep and echoing. "I'm not convincing myself. The days where I needed to have passed. Now it's just time to do it."

Before he finished speaking the ectoblasts he'd been holding were swung from his hands and Danny began flying at Vlad, knowing that he could cover the distance quickly enough that the fight was nearly over. Once Vlad was dead the ghosts who had been serving him would be gone. There was no reason for them to stay and fight a losing fight without fear of Vlad to keep them there, and the only ones that Danny ever really worried about were already out of commission or had never shown. The parries Vlad made with his own power blocked both shots, deflecting one right back at Danny who only dipped in the air and then twisted back up into his flight pattern, the other down to the ground.

Then Vlad split, one becoming three, and Danny resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he followed suit. The first Vlad, the original, faced off against Danny, blast for blast into shield. The second turned tail and shot into the sky with one of Danny's copies following. The third send a darkly red blast ground-ward to follow the deflected green that was Danny's power. There was a yell from beneath them and Danny, one and all, turned to find the source of it. It hadn't been just a yell, it had been afraid—terrified—and his heart stopped as he saw his mother and Tucker at ground zero where his own blast had been sent.

The stones that it had hit had all shattered and Danny could see blood darkening one of Tucker's sleeves as his arm was cradled to his chest. His mother was in front of Tucker, Maddie's eyes wide and determines, if not afraid of the blasts that Vlad had sent towards the ground. "Mom!" Danny yelled, pulling all of his energy back into himself and vanishing the duplicates.

His hands were outstretched and he willed his ectoplasm into a tangible form, willing it faster and faster and closing his eyes for a moment as it spun out and out to leave him feeling weak and dizzy. Then there was impact, green and red behind his eyelids before Danny opened them to find out if he'd managed to save them, or if he had two more very permanent reasons to kill Vlad. The power he'd forced out was reeling itself back in now that its job was done, and Danny's shout was one of relief as he saw that his mother and Tucker both were covered in dust, more blood from dozens of tiny cuts where Danny had driven them out of the way, but they were alive. Alive and well, he saw, because his mother was climbing back to her feet, jaw tensed and teeth gritted in anger and determination as she took her ectogun back up to join Jack and Jazz in the fight.

Tucker was well, too, though he'd traded the Fenton lipstick for a larger ectogun that, oddly enough, didn't have as much recoil to it as the tiny device did. His arm was useless, but he didn't try to get up. He only sat with it in his lap, pushed to his stomach and chest by the way his legs were curled against his chest. Danny had a moment's worth of relief as he looked, and then he saw Tucker's eyes move up to him, a short smile gracing his features before it twisted to horror, Tucker's bottle green eyes going wide. As Tucker began struggling to his feet Danny began to turn.

Then Sam screamed.

If the fear he'd felt for his mother and Tucker had made his heart stop, the painful, frightened scream that Sam gave sent it to ice, the blood in his veins boiling cold as he saw Sam with Vlad, one arm held tightly in his grip and the other clutching at the ghost's belt as she struggled to take the dangling weight of her body off of the arm he held. Danny didn't even need to have seen it before to know that it had been dislocated at the shoulder, and that blood was running down her arm, so tightly was he holding her that whatever passed for his fingernails—claws most likely given the evil stature of his ectoplasmic signature—was digging into her skin.

She screamed again as he shook her, and Sam's good hand lost its grip on his belt so that she was dangling by nothing but sinew and tendon and skin.

That was all it took for Danny to abandon any pretense of holding himself back and keeping something in reserve. In a heartbeat he was at Vlad's side, Sam's good arm in his hands as he pulled her to him. There was something inside him coherent enough to beg her forgiveness as she twisted towards him, her dislocated arm still firm and unmoving in Vlad's grasp. She screamed again, eyes wide and unseeing, and then they closed and her scream died abruptly. It was better that way, Danny knew, he'd dislocated his shoulder more than once and knew that it hurt like hell even without being twisted and pulled by her weight.

Then Danny's free hand was smashing out into Vlad's elbow. The other halfa's hands went numb and nerveless, letting Sam go as the joint in his arm was violently shifted backwards. It was Vlad's turn to feel the pain, and Danny heard him give a pained grunt as he held on to what was left of his dignity with both hands. With another green and white and black blurring Danny was back on the ground with his mother and Tucker, Sam carefully but quickly passed over to them as he whispered, "Get out of here. Now, fast. Run!"

He didn't wait to see if they did, instead shooting back up in the air to tackle Vlad up and back, knowing that what control he still had on his ghost was slipping as his humanity began screaming for blood and revenge and death. He fought it for a moment, just wanting to kill Vlad and get it over with, take his family home and see them safe and well and happy. Then Vlad opened his mouth.

"I'll kill you. I'll kill all of them, and your little whore first, and then I'll kill you," he hissed, whatever made his ghost coming violently to the fore as his form shifted and twisted and changed as Danny let him go and dropped back. Vlad's teeth were longer and his eyes darker, redder, more malevolent, and Danny knew that whatever had made Vlad Masters sane and still human was dead and gone. "I'll make them suffer, and then I'll kill them and—"

Vlad never got to finish his statement as Danny flew at him again, knocking the wind out of him as he wrapped his arms around the halfa in an unbreakable grip. Danny closed his eyes, breathed in once, and then the world exploded around him in a bright and blindingly brilliant flood of green.


	17. Chapter 16

There and Back Again

16

When he woke Danny's world was no longer dark. It wasn't dark, nor did it carry the blazing fury of his ectoenergy, the sudden shining pain that was him being ripped away from himself, the searing loss of some piece of him that had remained innocent and untouched by blood until the moment he had finally taken the life of another living being, the deathly tiredness that was him just wanting to lay down, to go to sleep and forget it all. The will to never wake up because it would only be a continuation of a nightmare that had lasted a decade and more. It was none of the things, because when Danny woke up, he was home.

It wasn't his parents' house, or even the house he'd bought and remodeled in the Amity Park where he belonged. It was the house he had shared for eight years with his wife, with the pleasant lavender and blue in the bedroom that greeted him like an old lover as he stretched for a moment and then shot upright, the reality of it hitting him like a slap in the face—or maybe like killing Vlad had hit him. There were familiar things strewn about, the pantyhose tossed over the foot of the bed, the bra that dangled out of a drawer in the dresser that hadn't been shut completely.

The jewelry box sitting atop it in a beautiful dark wood that would play Sam's favorite sonata when it was opened—he knew, he'd bought it for her as a first anniversary gift and filled it with shiny things and bright jewels every anniversary they had shared thereafter, and many times on days that had no special meaning just so that he could show her how special every day he shared with her was.

The sound of her humming down the hall in the kitchen. He could hear her humming quietly to herself, there was no radio. The crinkle of paper provided an undertone to it; she'd been shopping, she always got paper bags. And she always got mad at him when he went for the convenience of plastic on solo shopping sprees.

The familiar and almost welcome weight of a gold band on the third finger of his left hand.

"Oh," he breathed out as he cradled the hand to his chest, fingers smoothing along the shiny gold as he closed his eyes and breathed slowly, painfully.

A dream. A nightmare. A future that was inevitable, perhaps, he decided as he understood where he was, and that he must never have left. A warning from Clockwork, that he needed to guard his family more carefully, his friends, his lover. Danny's heart stuttered painfully in his chest as he realized that his Sam wasn't here, that this woman was the replacement he'd loved, nearly as much as his wonderful, beautiful Sam, yes, but not quite. She would never be the Sam Manson he'd grown up with, fallen in love with. Left behind knowing that he might lose her forever by disappearing from her life for Clockwork only knew how long.

And oh, it hurt, to know that what he'd had with _his_ Sam was a fever dream and nothing more. She existed, yes, and she lived on in the time he would return to eventually. But her, and him… _Them._ It never existed, did it? Hi heart gave another painful thump and Danny pushed the sheets back to slide out of the bed, his hands slipping across the almost forgotten texture of the cotton silk that she preferred, not the simple linen he'd furnished the house in his time with.

"Oh, Sam," he breathed, and he closed his eyes against the sudden burning, swallowed past the painful lump in his throat.

So many times before he'd wake, sure that he was home, and just like those times he wasn't. He shook his head once and crossed the room to the closet to drag out a pair of jeans and tug them on, then a t-shirt. He padded barefoot down the hall, the wood silken and smooth but entirely too worn beneath his feet. It seemed like he could feel every single place that was dented, marring the perfect finish that it had years ago when he'd first sanded it smooth; weeks ago when he did it again somewhen else.

She was in the kitchen, he found her easily by following her soft voice. There were paper bags folded neatly on the counter, weighed down by a bowl filled to overflowing with fruit. She was leaning up on her toes and across the counter to put away a box of seasoning, and it seemed all at once a weight lifted from his shoulders and a dagger straight through his heart as he saw her there. She was barefoot, too, and in shorts and a lavender tank top, her hair was tied back from her face with a pony tail holder and anything attempting escape pinned with too many bobby pins for him to count. She looked so young, so beautiful, so like the girl he'd loved.

When she turned he found himself still staring at her as though she were a stranger, and trying not to recoil as she smiled and came to him with a soft kiss and gentle arms twined through his and around his waist. His breath caught in his throat before he let it out, shaky and wavering as Danny's arms came up to hold her tightly against him. He found himself pressing his face to her shoulder, eyes closed and buried against her skin in an effort not to cry.

"I love you," he whispered, the words catching and hesitating as he choked them out. I love you, Sam, I love you so much." It was half-sob as he held her, wishing and knowing there was no hope for it, that he was back in his time and that his was his Sam, not the woman he'd been married to for eight years. He could almost wish he'd never agreed to Clockwork's wisdom, as hollow as it was knowing that the Time Master would never have to live through the hell that Danny had already lived through, would still live through.

"Danny," Sam said softly, worried and frightened as her hands came up to stroke his shoulders, his neck, smooth the hair on his head as he clung to her. "Danny, sweetie, what's wrong?"

He shook his head where his face was against her skin, halfway relieved that he wasn't actually crying as he said softly into her throat, "I just love you." He breathed in for a moment the almost familiar scent of vanilla and cinnamon. "I just want you to know how much I love you."

The words weren't hollow, but as Danny pulled back to look down at her he could hear his voice and couldn't help but wonder if he was trying to convince himself of it. Sam smiled up at him, uncertain and worried, but so much love there. he leaned his head down and kissed her, gently, his hands gripping her waist as she wound her arms up his shoulders and around his neck to pull him ever closer, her body pressing into his, willing and pliable as her lips.

He groaned and pulled her closer, his mind telling him, if only for a moment, that he was somewhere else in a tangerine colored kitchen with bright dishes. She answered him, her kiss as hungry and powerful as his for a moment before she wiggled against him, pulled back and pushed against his shoulders, a playful smile on her face and a laugh to her voice.

"I don't think so, Danny," she said as she danced away from him and to a plastic cup on the counter opposite them. "You do this to me every time, damn it, and I plan on enjoying my milkshake without you seducing me so that it melts before I can."

He gave her a familiar feeling smile, quite aware of what she was talking about. It was a hobby of his, to interrupt her whenever she had a milkshake so that it melted and she couldn't drink it. Anytime she asked, he would tell her it was because he liked her body. A true enough answer that covered the lie within: Danny's Sam loved strawberry milkshakes. The Sam in this life… didn't. it was a painfully and pitiful reminder of who she was—who she wasn't—every time he kissed her after she'd drunk the pistachio flavored concoction she favored.

So he tried to make so that he never had to kiss her, the shock of the first time driving him to ghost and away from her with no real explanation.

"You want to help me?" she asked, and he didn't answer, merely fell into the silent routine as his mind drifted away and awhen, to another Sam. To the wishful thinking that it was his Sam who he was helping, handing cans of fruit to, vegetables. His Sam who was splashing suds at him as she scrubbed at a pot he'd apparently left from the night before. His Sam who would dart flirtatious and promising glances at him. His Sam who offered him a sip of her milkshake, and without thinking Danny took it, slipping the straw to his mouth and pulling on it deeply.

If he'd been thinking he never would have; he hated pistachio. But Danny's eyes went wide as silky smooth strawberry slipped into his mouth, and he turned to Sam with a start. She was smiling at him as she faded away, the whole house seeming to slip into black nothingness that made his mind spin and dip until his stomach was sick with it and his eyes closed in a wave of disorientation.

---

When he woke this time it was to home; his parents' home and his old room. He knew it for what it was, the way dust had gathered on the rockets still lining the shelves, dangling from the ceiling on near invisible fishing line. The fact that they were still there at all, and Danny rolled to his side with a groan, his head aching as waves of nausea from whatever the hell was going on slid through his stomach. Danny swallowed convulsively against the heat rising along the back of his throat as he hung his head from the side of the bed, eyes closed and breathing shallowly through his nose. It helped, ironically enough, but it was still minutes before he thought he had enough control to pull himself to a sitting position.

His head still seemed to be spinning as his fingers slid across his left hand, found the smooth skin at his third finger that didn't seem to belong, and no ring. Beyond that the only thing he could really feel was pain, for his entire body seemed to ache as if he'd been hit with a sledgehammer. Or maybe a dozen of them, at every important point of his body and everywhere in between.

He searched his mind for what had nearly been there the first time he'd awoke, for the memory of Vlad's death, but he had only the vaguest impressions of what actually happened. The feelings that the now forgotten murder evoked were still there, strong beneath the current of his relief at being back where he belonged, and Danny looked up again, eyes lifting from the sheet that covered him to find Clockwork floating at the side of his bed.

"I would ask how you're feeling, Daniel, but I already know," he said with an almost smug cocking of the eyebrow above his scarred eye.

Danny gave Clockwork a sardonic grin. "You know, that wise man routine gets old every now and then." Clockwork only smiled. "I don't supposed there's a cure for this one other than time?" he asked, and Clockwork shook his head. Danny's voice turned wry. "Yeah. Didn't think so."

He slipped his legs over the side of the bed, running a hand along each of them to check for any wounds that he needed to pay attention to. His arms were clear, both visibly and to touch, but his shoulders ached and his back felt like someone had laid a rake against it and proceeded to gouge furrows along his flesh. He winced, then grimaced as he rolled his neck with a few painful, if extremely satisfying pops.

"So. You've got some explaining to do," Danny said without preamble, not trying to stand but staring up at the ghost with expectant eyes shaded in worry. "I want to know what happened, because apparently I can't really remember it. And I want to know what… what _that_ was, whatever it was. And I want to know who brought me here, and I want—I-I want to know if they're all safe. And alive."

"Such a demanding list," Clockwork said with a tilt of his head, and Danny's eyes flashed green.

He fought down the sudden surge of anger. "I think I've earned a few demands, when they're only questions."

"So you have," Clockwork said slowly, and nodded as his form shifted in a blur that Danny ignored from years of ingrained habit. "Do you prefer an order, or may I proceed as I'm meant to?" Danny's ground his teeth and looked down for a moment, not trusting himself to answer. "Then I'll answer them as I am supposed to."

"They're alive," Clockwork said without preamble, and Danny's heart beat spastically at the words. "All of them with the exception of Vlad."

"He was never meant to live," Danny muttered in stiff reply. "Killing him was the whole damned idea."

"So it was." Clockwork was unperturbed by Danny's dark attitude, seeing it easily for the turmoil that was inside of the younger ghost. "As for the rest, I can go in order of what happened. The last thing you actually remember about the battle?"

Danny rolled his eyes. "You already know the answer, Clockwork. Can't you just get on with it?"

Clockwork smiled. "But," and the smile was definitely malicious, "it's more fun this way."

Danny groaned. "Alright, fine. You win. I remember…" _Flash of green, arms wrapped around, slamming against his shoulders, run, fast, go now…_ "I remember telling them to leave, and going after Vlad. I… screamed?"

"For everything else you have learned in the years since I took you, your wail is still the most powerful weapon in your arsenal," Clockwork said without emotion. "You killed him with it. There was nothing left when you were finished, of Vlad or his castle or his lab."

"Did they…?"

Clockwork nodded. "They fled, but not away as you intended. Just far enough away to be safe and protected by the terrain. They collected you when it was over and brought you back here. You've been asleep for three days, and they're all beginning to be quite worried."

Danny nodded his head vaguely. "And the dream?"

Clockwork only smiled as he lifted a hand to the clock at the top of his staff. "Some things, Danny, you just shouldn't question. Just go with it and let life happen, and all will turn out as it should." He pressed the button on the watch and smiled. "And try to enjoy your future, since you've seen what it can hold." He whispered, "_Time in._"

Within seconds Danny could feel the difference as time moved from a standstill to proper momentum, and he realized that the unexpected nausea was probably from whatever Clockwork had done to send him traipsing through time and realities. He ran a hand through his hair, scrubbing at it and resisting the urge to give into the full stretch his body wanted as he felt the tight and raw places on his back warning him against it. It would be, he decided, far safer to avoid anything that might hurt or aggravate whatever it was. Then the door opened and Sam was standing there, her face worried and pale, one arm in a sling as the other held on to a bowl full of water.

She didn't seem to notice him as she set the bowl down on the desk and began tugging what looked like gauze pads and antiseptic cream from within the sling, though she was very careful and deliberate in her movement. He knew that she must still be hurting from what he and Vlad both had put her through, but couldn't bring himself to regret it completely. He knew that the temporary pain she was in now was necessary; if he hadn't acted as he did she might be dead.

She turned, her free hand pressed to her shoulder as she did, and then her eyes went wide as she saw him sitting up and launched herself at him. Carefully, gently, but still with as much enthusiasm as Danny could have ever wanted. "You're awake!" she said breathlessly before pressing her mouth to his and kissing him until he was as senseless with it as he had been with waking up.

"It's only been three days," he exclaimed as he pulled back, one hand carefully touching her shoulder and pulling at the short cotton sleeve to look at the bruising beneath. They were sickly yellow and green, and some places green and blue and the purple that bordered black. He winced. "How bad does it hurt?"

She shook her head as she ran a hand along his face. "Not much, Danny. You shouldn't worry about me, I'm fine."

"So am I," he told her with a smile.

She smiled back, then bit her lip. "You are. You really are now."

"What is that supposed to mean?" he asked. Surely she didn't mean that he was fine because he'd killed Vlad, a thought that Danny still found himself not quite ready to deal with.

"Come with me," she ordered him, and pulled him up carefully, her hands never touching his back as she did. And follow her he did, not even ready to guess at whatever she was hiding, or at least not saying, until she dragged him into the bathroom and shoved him in front of the mirror.

If Danny had thought that he was dizzy when he woke, then the world had obviously tilted wildly on its axis as he looked into the mirror. It was… freaky was the only word that came to mind, and Danny ran a hand across a face that hadn't lost all of its boyishness yet, that still held a hint of the rounder face he'd had since childhood before his final growth spurt just after his twenty-first birthday had sent him two inches taller and eaten at any of the baby fat left from his combative lifestyle. His hair was shorter, much different than the casually messed style he'd adopted as he grew older, and his face was still too smooth for the cheeks he'd shaved daily for years, now.

"I'm…" He couldn't find the words to say it, could only silently wonder at what Clockwork had done to manage the time reversal necessary for him to be younger again, to be the age he should have been.

Perhaps it was part and parcel of the time stream hopping Danny had done, perhaps it was a gift for doing as asked, performing a murder that was against his morals and ethics no matter what Vlad had done to deserve it. Perhaps it had been preordained. Danny laughed a little, trying to pretend that there wasn't a hysterical edge to it as he realized that whatever it was, it had been in the design since before Clockwork had approached him. And Clockwork would know…

_Some things, Danny, you just shouldn't question._

"I won't," he said to his reflection in the mirror, forcefully taking Clockwork's advice and letting it happen.

Heedless of the tight skin on his back and the way Sam gave a startled oof as he pressed her against him, Danny kissed her just as thoroughly as he had in the dream—future?—he'd woken up in first.

---

It was months before Danny was sure that he'd managed to explain everything to his parents. He had Sam and Tucker and Jazz for help—Valerie, too, to an extent, even if she took Vlad's death hard. Danny never asked why, he preferred to think that she hated to be manipulated, to lose the man she'd hero worshipped and looked up to since he'd first approached her about ghost hunting when she was fourteen. He had his friends for help in other places, too, because none of them had forgotten Clockwork's admission that Danny wouldn't deal with committing murder as easily as he seemed to bounce back from growing younger by eight years.

For the first few weeks after Vlad's death, Danny seemed to be as well as he'd been before he'd disappeared. He took life in leaps and bounds, tried to spend as much time with his friends and family as he could before he took the gainfully employed route. None of them begrudged him the need to be with them, especially the ones who'd heard Danny's pain from his own lips.

But it was the weeks and months after that first that showed them just how deeply Danny could regret what he'd done. He put on a good face, but they refused to be fooled. Tucker would drag him out for male bonding time, force him to smile and to laugh and remind him in unusually subtle ways that if Danny hadn't done as he did, then none of them would be there for this. It wasn't the most effective way of justifying murder, and Tucker knew it, but his instinct told him to appeal to the part of Danny that loved his friends.

Jazz took to spending a great deal of her free time with him, listening to the things he said, crying silently for what he didn't. It was brother and sister bonding at its best as he tried to teach her how to cook, failed miserably at it, and laid out everything he felt as he did so in words that she understood, even if he didn't. He depended on her, too, as a go between with their parents. She often smiled at that, wondering how it was that he always seemed to know when he was in the most danger of a prying mother or overenthusiastic father poking at the emotional wounds that had barely begun to heal, scars that would break open with the barest prods.

She protected him from them even as she tried to make them understand that the shadows inside his eyes and the circles beneath were only normal for what he'd been through. For what he always went through, because with Vlad gone the ghosts began roaming Amity Park against and Danny Phantom became, once again, the equally loved and hated spectral hero of the skies.

It was Sam, though, who saw Danny at his most vulnerable, and who did the least as she helped him. She hadn't been very concerned when he hadn't done more than take her to dinner the first month, kiss her, hold her hand. The worry had begun to take hold as he pushed her way, the dinners coming further and further between, with Danny using anything and everything as an excuse not to see her as the months progressed. Six months after Vlad's death she stole his house key and made a copy, and boldly let herself in late that night. He wasn't out dealing with any ghosts, she knew that. She'd already begged Valerie and Tucker to help her convince the Fenton's to lock down the portal for just the one night, and was secure in the knowledge that there would be no interruptions as she dealt with Danny exactly as he needed to.

A sturdy steel toed boot to the shins, even if she left them unlaced by the front door.

It wasn't until she was standing outside his door, a shadow in the doorway, bare feet against the cool wood of the floor, that she realized exactly why he was pushing her away. He was there, asleep, and thrashing through the middle of a nightmare that she knew she'd lived through not all that long ago. The way his face was twisted in fear, and when he said her name in his sleep moments before tossing to one side, and the another as if fighting an enemy in his own bed… It broke her heart.

She hadn't dressed for bed, she'd planned on her clothes decorating his room as she convinced him that he was being foolish and that she loved him and that there was nothing keeping them apart. But she could see clear as day that something was; a past that haunted him and the fear of losing her.

She finally crawled into the bed beside him, her jeans and shirt and bra left forgotten on the floor as she lifted the sheet and lay down beside him, the soft cotton of the shirt she'd found in a draw thin between them as she reached out and pulled him against her. He startled out of the nightmare, eyes wide and afraid and mouth half open on a cry as she pressed her lips to his cheek and drew him closer. The strength that he held her with was almost frightening, and she held him back as tightly as she could, refusing to let go for even a second, even as she felt the heat of tears against her neck and shoulder.

It was dawn before he let go, before she settled with his head lying on her stomach, eyes dark against his pale skin, hair swept across them as he watched her with tired thoughts swirling inside of him. Then he opened his mouth, and told her that he loved her, and then he began telling her everything, living up to the promise that he'd made her the day before he'd killed Vlad on a nameless floating island in the Ghost Zone.

That night Sam went to sleep beside him, ready to hold him when the nightmares came again. But they never did, and she knew that whatever had been festering inside of Danny had finally begun to heal. It wasn't much, but it was a start.


	18. Epilogue

There and Back Again

Epilogue

If anyone had asked Danny Fenton when he was a child if he would marry his best friend, he would have said no, red-faced and stuttering even as a whispered voice in the back of his mind said, "I'd like to," even as his eyes flitted to her. They'd been married for five years and he was twenty-eight again, but Danny rarely flinched as he thought her said the words anymore. The eight years with the Sam that no longer was and never would be again were a memory that he kept, and the eleven years he'd lived his life in that other time were nothing more than that.

A pleasant memory, if somewhat distant and detached as he rolled out of slumber, yawning and stretching and finding the warmth of the blue walls without expecting anything else. The blankets were strewn across the bed, a testament to the vigorous wakeup Sam had given him when she started her day at dawn—he never understood how a woman who was still proudly Goth could be such a morning person. He'd had a much earlier morning than her with a ghost pulling him unwillingly from the warmth of their bed and her body, but he'd made it back and had still been awake enough to be excruciatingly thorough in their morning lovemaking.

_Saturday morning,_ he realized with an almost coherent thought. They had the whole weekend together and, he glanced at the clock on the nightstand, it wasn't even noon yet. Another yawn later and Danny was out of the bed with a stretch and his habitual vertebrae realignment echoing as he arched his back. Jeans were tugged from a drawer in the dresser and he ran an absent hand across the jewelry box he given her for Christmas the first year he'd been back. This one was lacquered, a lovely redwood color that didn't really resemble the one from another life so much. It had been a conscious choice, even going so far as to keep it quiet and for nothing but decoration.

The late morning sun glinted off of the silvery ring on his left hand, his only other true concession to separating what was here and now, and what was there and then. He hadn't really given her much of a choice when he'd proposed, he'd picked her ring out by himself and she'd gone along with it to let everything match. The bands were still plain and simple, white gold instead of yellow, but he'd given her a brilliant emerald cut diamond instead of a solitaire. She understood; she always understood.

Even now he still smiled to see it on his hand. He expected that sixty years from now he'd still be smiling.

He brushed his teeth quickly, wincing at the strong peppermint flavor of Sam's current toothpaste and feeling the need to scrub his tongue against the almost painful tingling it left. His hair—it was a lost cause. He needed a trim, and he should probably shave, but he didn't want to waste time with that when he'd much rather just find his wife and kiss her senseless. And then maybe he could coax her back into bed, or give into her demands to watch a movie, go to the park, visit Tucker and Valerie. Anything would do so long as he was with her.

The radio was playing softly as he made his way quietly down the hallway, and Sam was singing along with it. She'd never admit it to anyone else, but sometimes, especially when she was cleaning or putting things away, she liked listening to the popular music that played on most of the local stations. She said it put her in a good mood, gave her more energy. Of course, then she said it also made her want to tear her hair out so she always finished whatever she was doing quickly in order to turn it off. He only kissed her at her semi-confession.

She was there, putting away groceries. It could have been a painful reminder if Danny hadn't already come across her doing the very same thing every weekend of every year since they'd lived together. This morning she was in a pale green shirt that clung to her body like a second skin, and a skirt in shades of green and black and (not very much) pink. Her feet were bare, sandals kicked off and in a corner of the kitchen as she stretched up to shove a bottle of olive oil into the cabinet, and then blow her hair out of her face as she cursed her height.

He smiled and slipped up behind her, quiet as death, and wrapped his arms around her as he pressed kissed along Sam's neck, her hair tickling his nose as he did. She started, then gave a laughing squeal as she realized he'd done it on purpose, and she slapped one of his arms as she wiggled away, knowing that her hips were far more enticing than she meant them to be but unable to help it as she rolled her eyes.

"Very mature, Danny," she said, a smile taking the sarcasm down a notch. "I got you a milkshake, so stay out of mine."

The moment her back was turned and she was shoving something else into a cabinet he grabbed the cup with the purple lip gloss painted straw and began drinking it, the strawberry sweet and cold. "You were out late this morning," he said as he wiggled the straw.

She shrugged as she straightened and turned, her hand outstretched and demanding her milkshake back. "I had to stop before I went shopping. Had an appointment."

"Where at?" he asked, not really concerned as he found the second milkshake among the bags still on the counter and took an absent swig of it before he began folding the paper bags that were already empty.

"The doctor's," was the only answer he got, and he glanced up with her.

He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. He wasn't surprised that she had, she'd been feeling sick a few weeks ago. Danny had blamed her tofu since he claimed it made him sick every time she made him eat it. She'd agreed when after a few days her stomach had settled and she'd been fine. But the lingering tiredness had stayed a little longer until even Danny was asking her if she felt alright whenever she sat down to rest and fell asleep, all unmeaning.

"So, virus? Food poisoning?" he asked, another bag folded and stacked with the rest. "I told you to stay away from the tofu after that bad batch."

She laughed, and he couldn't help but smile at the sound. She turned and caught his smile, returning it with a wide one of her own. "I'm fine, Danny," she said, her eyes sparkling. "I'm not sick. Just pregnant."

**---**

**Well, this is the end for me. I posted the last two at the same time to make everyone happy enough not to kill me when I tell them I've nothing new at all to post. I make no promises, since work and the new site are taking lots of time, but I'll try to finish up _Challenge Theories_ soon, and then move along with other things. Thank you so much for all of the wonderful reviews (I'm answering most of the backlog since December, but not all...) and I hope to see you again soon when I have new evils to post.**

**CD**


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